markz
100 TW
Banks don't like the optics of crypto, more then harvesting data. Sure you'll have some banks that might get into the crypto game, but it wont be a full swoop of the majors doing it.
Dauntless said:
Bitcoins
- Thread starter fizzit
- Start date
Dauntless
100 TW
They must be listening. We discussed it here first.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/09/business/bitcoin-mining-emissions/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/09/business/bitcoin-mining-emissions/index.html
markz
100 TW
And in other forums before us.
Dauntless said:
Dauntless
100 TW
But they ignored them before.
TheBeastie
1 MW
^That was a really interesting youtube story, the world really is crazy, imagine digging tunnels under someone's house for days straight and not even having a clue where you are... just pure crazy!Dauntless said:
I am still mining on my single RTX 3080 video card that I bought primarily for playing games.
After deciding to mine ETH the next thing I have been doing is trying trying out what miner pool to join and stick with (because only groups of miners working together make money). I joined a certain ETH pool that looked good (lots of miners and low fees) only to discover that my 100MH/s rate for ETH is crappy by their standards and I will only get a paid in ~19 days, unless I build much bigger miner rig etc which I won't be doing.
The other thing to look at is what core miner program to use, I noticed NiceHash is basically a front end GUI (with their own pools/exchange) to most of the popular mining programs, but interestingly they have issues with some of the core miner program creators themselves and according to this video below they haven't been happy with not getting their way...
The interesting thing to note in this video is it highlights is how much anonymity there is even for major crypto players, it makes sense because if you are sitting on $10million+ in crypto that can't be well tracked/recovered then some hardcore criminal gangs probably would feel quite comfortable raiding your home and torturing you and your family to death for your crypto money.
This video below mentions how some crypto players have permanently "disappeared" not too long after revealing who they are.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNQAY7KzStU
[youtube]BNQAY7KzStU[/youtube]
The good ol days when there was real actual physical loot to torture people for...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kg7goEASO5E
[youtube]kg7goEASO5E[/youtube]
Dauntless
100 TW
Flash crash. The peak was $63,588.20 on Tuesday the 13th, the floor was then whatever, I don't think it got below $50k. You can look up the price at the moment you see this.
[youtube]etUTo6_FtKE[/youtube]
[youtube]etUTo6_FtKE[/youtube]
Dauntless
100 TW
https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/17/investing/what-is-dogecoin/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/22/investing/bitcoin-what-you-need-to-know/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/22/investing/bitcoin-what-you-need-to-know/index.html
CharlesHewitt
1 µW
- Joined
- May 17, 2021
- Messages
- 1
TheBeastie said:^That was a really interesting youtube story, the world really is crazy, imagine digging tunnels under someone's house for days straight and not even having a clue where you are... just pure crazy!Dauntless said:
I am still mining on my single RTX 3080 video card that I bought primarily for playing gamble games like this.
After deciding to mine ETH the next thing I have been doing is trying trying out what miner pool to join and stick with (because only groups of miners working together make money). I joined a certain ETH pool that looked good (lots of miners and low fees) only to discover that my 100MH/s rate for ETH is crappy by their standards and I will only get a paid in ~19 days, unless I build much bigger miner rig etc which I won't be doing.
The other thing to look at is what core miner program to use, I noticed NiceHash is basically a front end GUI (with their own pools/exchange) to most of the popular mining programs, but interestingly they have issues with some of the core miner program creators themselves and according to this video below they haven't been happy with not getting their way...
The interesting thing to note in this video is it highlights is how much anonymity there is even for major crypto players, it makes sense because if you are sitting on $10million+ in crypto that can't be well tracked/recovered then some hardcore criminal gangs probably would feel quite comfortable raiding your home and torturing you and your family to death for your crypto money.
This video below mentions how some crypto players have permanently "disappeared" not too long after revealing who they are.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNQAY7KzStU
[youtube]BNQAY7KzStU[/youtube]
The good ol days when there was real actual physical loot to torture people for...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kg7goEASO5E
[youtube]kg7goEASO5E[/youtube]
Thanks for the interesting video! This is actually the first time I see that you can really be hunted if they find out that you are successfully mining. Unfortunately, there can be no safe place in our world.
TheBeastie
1 MW
I have been thinking about why some crypto coins are more popular and successful than others.
Obviously, BitCoin has remained king for a long time because it has been around the longest.
But Etherum isn't that far behind.
I think it makes sense that ETH is popular and probably will replace BitCoin because they do more things smartly.
Number 1 was ETH was deliberately designed to thwart ASIC miners by using a mining algorithm that closely aligns with PC video card performance rather than the algo BitCoin uses.
This means a MASSIVELY larger amount of everyday people around the world can mine some ETH coin and get a feel for the technology and start using it without having to risk much upfront.
ETH transaction fees are lower than BitCoin, so this is another win.
Also, ETH is faster at transactions, it does FAR more transactions a second than BitCoin, as shown in the below in image. And really the list of advantages over ETH just doesn't end. Comparatively, BitCoin is a very shit antique cryptocurrency and the only logical thing for it now is to be taken over by the others in terms of market cap etc.
https://twitter.com/TransactionFees/status/1405329457708216325?s=20
^Bitcoin = 251k transactions vs ETH 1.2million transactions.
And anyone who has a clue would know that ETH is soon set to hit a block where ETH fees are HALVED again.
https://youtu.be/OP_0OsVYowI
[youtube]OP_0OsVYowI[/youtube]
And then in around 2022 ETH is set to change to "Proof of Stake" instead of mining-based "Proof of Work", which should slash fees again and also massively reduce the electricity used to run the network.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChE0BQUHzr0
[youtube]ChE0BQUHzr0[/youtube]
And this brings me to the other disturbing thing I have noticed about BitCoin folks, they are insanely biased, more biased than I have seen in any other people talking about ANY topic, even political people, IMO.
I have become increasingly alarmed at how insanely biased (or full of shit) they are, but I think they are more just insanely biased than anything else.
They all really believe that BitCoin is mostly mined via green renewable energy, like this guy below, even Elon Musk isn't going to be that fanciful-minded.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1405482221666852871?s=20
So many of these major BitCoin people verge on the claims that bitcoin is mined (practically) on ~100% renewable energy, there are tons of YouTubers out there etc that all say this crap, and they say it with a disturbingly straight and very serious face... This shows they are nothing but SUPER-BIASED in their opinions to the point it overrides logic.
Here we can see at 35seconds in CoinDesk reporting how BitCoin hash rate MASSIVELY plunged due to coal-power station outages in China.
https://youtu.be/FGNJHyqWF8A?t=36
[youtube]FGNJHyqWF8A[/youtube]
And I am not a hardcore ETH lover, I expect it will probably get taken over by another coin in the long-term future, one that is again less generally greedy than BitCoin or ETH combined, would be the most likely scenario, as crypto tech is a "free market". ETH has been a great example of how being a bit more fair for a wider amount of people has allowed it to become arguably the replacement of BitCoin, how is that you ask?
It's the transaction totals, because so much BitCoin has been lost over the years it is so easy to pump up in value due to "supply and demand law" but its all just smoke and mirrors when you look at BitCoins worth in such a way.
A better way to compare different crypto coins worth is transaction volumes converted into USD, and here ETH is now very close to BTC, this chart is a bit old but it helps push through the facts.
https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-trading-volumes-tumble-june
https://www.coindesk.com/market-wrap-ether-volume-bitcoin-crypto-struggles-gains
But even in the simple price you can see in the weekly bar chart of ETH/BTC that ETH has constantly gained over BitCoin. To me, this just screams that there is a massive rotation out of the antiquated BitCoin system into other more modern crypto coins like Ethereum.
Rotation in traditional stock markets/sectors happens all the time, funds move out of one asset they believe is finished and move into something new, so I see no reason why this isn't happening in the crypto-coin market.
This is why NiceHash pays everyone in BTC when they are mining ETH crypto coin, it is literally a mechanism to allow major BitCoin owners to rotate out of BitCoin into other cryptos, these guys do NOT want BitCoin.
The last thing funds do when they are rotating out of a sector/market is tell anyone they are doing so, that is the ultimate rule not to break.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/17/ethereum-is-outperforming-bitcoin-morgan-stanley-thinks-it-knows-why.html
All up, I think BitCoin fans are a bit delusional with greed overriding logic, but this is a very powerful tonic for any human. BitCoin fans think that due to the diminishing supply of available BTC it can be pumped up very easily.
But if more of the free market don't believe in BitCoin any more than the few people who own most of the BTC out there are the (in stock market terms) "bag holders" caught out holding the bag.
It won't matter if the last major bitcoin hoarder bought BTC for $1billion if no one else wants to buy it for anything other than $1000, all it means was he was the last sucker and everyone else has moved onto other crypto coins.
It's just like two guys trading Ferrari cars with each other for $1billion each, sure they can trade them all they want and show everyone the volume charts with market cap etc. But as SOON as they try to sell their Ferrari to someone outside their group (in the real world) then all of a sudden they find the best offer for their "Ferrari coin" was a mere $1million (1000 times LESS), that is the real-world effect of supply and demand law.
So I think BitCoin is a trash technology compared to the other crypto coins and no one should bother with it compared with ETH etc, but there are a lot of suckers in this world
Obviously, BitCoin has remained king for a long time because it has been around the longest.
But Etherum isn't that far behind.
I think it makes sense that ETH is popular and probably will replace BitCoin because they do more things smartly.
Number 1 was ETH was deliberately designed to thwart ASIC miners by using a mining algorithm that closely aligns with PC video card performance rather than the algo BitCoin uses.
This means a MASSIVELY larger amount of everyday people around the world can mine some ETH coin and get a feel for the technology and start using it without having to risk much upfront.
ETH transaction fees are lower than BitCoin, so this is another win.
Also, ETH is faster at transactions, it does FAR more transactions a second than BitCoin, as shown in the below in image. And really the list of advantages over ETH just doesn't end. Comparatively, BitCoin is a very shit antique cryptocurrency and the only logical thing for it now is to be taken over by the others in terms of market cap etc.
https://twitter.com/TransactionFees/status/1405329457708216325?s=20
^Bitcoin = 251k transactions vs ETH 1.2million transactions.
And anyone who has a clue would know that ETH is soon set to hit a block where ETH fees are HALVED again.
https://youtu.be/OP_0OsVYowI
[youtube]OP_0OsVYowI[/youtube]
And then in around 2022 ETH is set to change to "Proof of Stake" instead of mining-based "Proof of Work", which should slash fees again and also massively reduce the electricity used to run the network.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChE0BQUHzr0
[youtube]ChE0BQUHzr0[/youtube]
And this brings me to the other disturbing thing I have noticed about BitCoin folks, they are insanely biased, more biased than I have seen in any other people talking about ANY topic, even political people, IMO.
I have become increasingly alarmed at how insanely biased (or full of shit) they are, but I think they are more just insanely biased than anything else.
They all really believe that BitCoin is mostly mined via green renewable energy, like this guy below, even Elon Musk isn't going to be that fanciful-minded.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1405482221666852871?s=20
So many of these major BitCoin people verge on the claims that bitcoin is mined (practically) on ~100% renewable energy, there are tons of YouTubers out there etc that all say this crap, and they say it with a disturbingly straight and very serious face... This shows they are nothing but SUPER-BIASED in their opinions to the point it overrides logic.
Here we can see at 35seconds in CoinDesk reporting how BitCoin hash rate MASSIVELY plunged due to coal-power station outages in China.
https://youtu.be/FGNJHyqWF8A?t=36
[youtube]FGNJHyqWF8A[/youtube]
And I am not a hardcore ETH lover, I expect it will probably get taken over by another coin in the long-term future, one that is again less generally greedy than BitCoin or ETH combined, would be the most likely scenario, as crypto tech is a "free market". ETH has been a great example of how being a bit more fair for a wider amount of people has allowed it to become arguably the replacement of BitCoin, how is that you ask?
It's the transaction totals, because so much BitCoin has been lost over the years it is so easy to pump up in value due to "supply and demand law" but its all just smoke and mirrors when you look at BitCoins worth in such a way.
A better way to compare different crypto coins worth is transaction volumes converted into USD, and here ETH is now very close to BTC, this chart is a bit old but it helps push through the facts.
https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-trading-volumes-tumble-june
https://www.coindesk.com/market-wrap-ether-volume-bitcoin-crypto-struggles-gains
But even in the simple price you can see in the weekly bar chart of ETH/BTC that ETH has constantly gained over BitCoin. To me, this just screams that there is a massive rotation out of the antiquated BitCoin system into other more modern crypto coins like Ethereum.
Rotation in traditional stock markets/sectors happens all the time, funds move out of one asset they believe is finished and move into something new, so I see no reason why this isn't happening in the crypto-coin market.
This is why NiceHash pays everyone in BTC when they are mining ETH crypto coin, it is literally a mechanism to allow major BitCoin owners to rotate out of BitCoin into other cryptos, these guys do NOT want BitCoin.
The last thing funds do when they are rotating out of a sector/market is tell anyone they are doing so, that is the ultimate rule not to break.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/17/ethereum-is-outperforming-bitcoin-morgan-stanley-thinks-it-knows-why.html
All up, I think BitCoin fans are a bit delusional with greed overriding logic, but this is a very powerful tonic for any human. BitCoin fans think that due to the diminishing supply of available BTC it can be pumped up very easily.
But if more of the free market don't believe in BitCoin any more than the few people who own most of the BTC out there are the (in stock market terms) "bag holders" caught out holding the bag.
It won't matter if the last major bitcoin hoarder bought BTC for $1billion if no one else wants to buy it for anything other than $1000, all it means was he was the last sucker and everyone else has moved onto other crypto coins.
It's just like two guys trading Ferrari cars with each other for $1billion each, sure they can trade them all they want and show everyone the volume charts with market cap etc. But as SOON as they try to sell their Ferrari to someone outside their group (in the real world) then all of a sudden they find the best offer for their "Ferrari coin" was a mere $1million (1000 times LESS), that is the real-world effect of supply and demand law.
So I think BitCoin is a trash technology compared to the other crypto coins and no one should bother with it compared with ETH etc, but there are a lot of suckers in this world
stan.distortion
1 kW
- Joined
- Jun 12, 2019
- Messages
- 377
TheBeastie said:
$1300 recommended transaction fee is ok?? That's what it was a few weeks ago and that's far from ok. Storing all data on-chain is old tech too.
Just bought a $100 worth of Ethereum and Monero for my retirement.
I've been a big crypto nerd for a while now, so I will just break down what I know to be factual information and let you draw your own conclusions.
The first thing most people don't understand about BTC is that it's a proof of work, vs. a proof of stake system. There are lots of vids explaining the difference, so I won't bore you with the details. The takeaway is that proof of work is more costly, but inherently more secure. The dirty secret behind all these higher performing altcoins with lower fees and faster transaction times is that they are based on proof of stake. People who say BTC is inferior aren't seeing the forest for the trees. While it's inferior for, say, buying a pack of gum, nobody needs that level of security for everyday transactions. It's a little bit like how you're okay using a debit card to buy a pack of gum, but would only buy a house with bank wire. BTC is the same way. If you were to buy a house, you would do a straight BTC transfer on chain, and the ten minutes and 15 dollars in fees would be absolutely nothing to you, and would be far faster and far cheaper than current wire transfer networks. Whereas if you're just buying a pack of gum, you would use some kind of BTC derivative, that would be essentially free and instantaneous. These derivatives are off chain, but get settled on chain in massive blocks of millions of dollars, so the transaction fees are spread out. It's still very secure, though, so gone will be the days of someone stealing your debit card.
There has been a lot of debate in the developer community over enhancing BTC at the expense of security, or keeping it simple and making it more of a reserve style asset. So far the latter has always won, which is why BTC is still relatively slow and expensive. But when you look at other highly secure reserve assets, BTC is still way faster, way more secure in every way, and way cheaper. You can move millions overseas in minutes for a small fraction of a percent, whereas that same transaction through the banking system would take days and cost thousands, and ultimately always involve centralized fiat currencies that could hypothetically change radically in relative value, or even collapse altogether, which is a genuine concern when dealing with non G7 central banks. We here in the west who aren't involved in international trade far underestimate the problems caused by third world banking, and the wrench that it throws in international trade. The petrodollar has been instrumental in mitigating that, but the problem will only be ultimately solved by a global currency. That used to be gold, and the dollar has simply been a stop gap measure in the progress from a physical global currency (gold and silver) to a digital one (possibly BTC).
The second critical piece of information to know about BTC currently is that it probably is in a bubble. While I believe its real value is in the millions, it is currently only a speculative asset, much like a startup company. The hope is that someday in the future, BTC will be a significant reserve currency, and ultimately the world reserve currency. That's what it was designed for, and it doesn't have much utility for anything else. So until it achieves that status, it's still only speculative. Some people argue that a central bank digital currency will drive it out of business, and maybe. But it's important to recognize that no CBDC does what BTC does. They're still centralized, still open to national manipulation (intentionally), and would actually be a step backwards to simply repeat the mistakes of the 1970s. So while you could argue that the powers that be might try to kill BTC, it's still erroneous to say that they can just introduce their own centralized version of a blockchain based currency and accomplish the same end. Not even close.
So understanding that it's still highly speculative, what's driving the price so high right now is twofold. One you have the cost of the network. As mining rewards go down as supply increases, the relative cost of mining goes up, and so does the price. It's not unlike how the price to mine new gold relates heavily to the price of gold. No one is going to operate nodes for BTC if they can't turn a profit, and while it's a definite opportunity the miners aren't getting filthy rich. So that's the good news. There IS a good, rational reason why the price keeps going up. It was designed that way, and due to the reward halving, it will continue to go up so long as people continue to see value in it, and invest in it speculatively.
The bad news is that a cancer has entered into the BTC community. The financial system has reached a paradoxical point where inflation is required to maintain the status quo, but also threatens at every turn to bring the whole thing down. This has caused a grid lock in the normal monetary system, where banks can no longer make new money by lending. In place of giving loans to create new money, banks are taking deposits and reserves and dumping them into speculative investments. They buy up speculative tech like Tesla, and also short it in the derivatives market to hedge their bets. If they do that right, it always guarantees a small profit no matter what, barring implosion of the markets.
At the same time, though, these corporations, in place of selling goods and services, are now having to look to cryptocurrencies as a quick way to make a few bucks to keep their stock prices up. That's why we're seeing these crypto pump and dumps being orchestrated by billionaires and hedge funds. It's a last ditch hail mary kind of play to keep their stocks from collapsing, which keeps the banks from collapsing, which keeps the entire economy temporarily afloat. But like housing in the 2000s, and commercial in 2019, they will ride the horse to death. This isn't sustainable.
Because of that, BTC may be headed for a crash, because it's being manipulated by people who are treating it like something disposable to be used up and thrown away when they're done with it. It's always in peril, because these banks, hedge funds, and corporations who hold so much of it, they will sell it like a used up race horse to a glue factory if and when they need a quick buck to avoid financial ruin.
And the retail investor in crypto isn't much different. If for example we have another crash, you better believe Joe BTC is going to sell to make his house payment, buy food, keep the lights on, pay Johnny's tuition, etc. And I mean you can't blame them, it's not like they're really going to have a choice. But the fact remains that you have a lot of people who have all this equity built up in their crypto holdings, and the economy is doing really badly, which means there might come a day soon when those people are going to desperately need that equity to live on, forcing them to cash in.
There are also very real threats of more Mt Gox type moments. There are lots of exchanges and hardware wallets with unknown security, and also BTC derivatives that could leave investors holding worthless stock and no BTC, much like GLD could leave people without any physical gold. These BTC funds are highly leveraged, so if the price of BTC were to go down significantly, and they became insolvent and couldn't pay the interest on that debt, their companies would go under and the lenders would repossess their BTC, potentially leaving stock holders with the bag. Note also that the fed has been buying junk bonds in companies like Microstrategies that are heavily invested in BTC. In other words, these guys have been borrowing money from the fed in the overnight markets and using it to buy more BTC, essentially using the BTC they already bought with investor money as collateral. It's not really any different than if you invested in a company buying real estate, and said company used the real estate bought with your investment as collateral to get a loan to buy more. If real estate were to collapse, the company would be unable to make payments and the properties would be repossessed by the banks, leaving them and you out in the cold.
The exchanges aren't much better. It's widely known that many if not all exchanges don't have the BTC in their possession to back up all the BTC that customers have stored with them. You BTC on an exchange is just a ledger they keep saying you get x amount of BTC, so they only have to keep on hand what they anticipate people will withdraw. This leads to uh oh moments where people try to withdraw and can't. That's happened with the largest and most well respected exchanges at times. They will play games where they lock accounts and impose unnecessary holding periods. Let's say BTC were to crash and everyone were to sell. The exchange may only have 10% of that on hand, meaning they won't be able to raise the money to pay out all of the accounts. So you might sell and have $20k sitting in the exchange, but might not be able to withdraw it. And if the exchange goes under, you might never get it.
Another threat is the unknown security of many hardware wallets. Since most aren't open source, it's hard to guess whether they can be hacked or not. But the temptation would be very high for someone at a high level in those companies, like a top level programmer, to write themselves a back door. If you're not generating your seeds offline through some kind of entropic method like throwing dice, and proving the firmware independently, you're always trusting the benevolence of the company itself and its programmers. As well as their security. You're trusting they didn't get hacked, that they didn't get punked by a contractor, etc. This being the case, I think the potential if not even the likelihood is there that there will be a mass hack of hardware wallets. Since they're considered iron clad, that will be a major blow to people if it ever happens. Even if it's not a well respected one like Ledger, just the words hardware wallet and hack in a headline will be devastating.
Now all of this is building the potential for something really interesting to happen. If there's a crash, the central banks are going to inherit lots of BTC, in the same manner that they've inherited so many MBSs. People don't realize yet how deep BTC's tentacles have reached into the mainstream financial system. Case in point, BTC now goes down over the weekend, when the stock exchanges are closed, and goes up on Monday. For those who don't know, BTC trades 24/7/365, and normal trading hours didn't used to impact it at all. But now so much of the trading volume is from these derivatives that it's actually tanking on the weekends, because it loses that volume while the stock exchange is closed. What that means is that massive amounts of BTC are now held by banks, hedge funds, and publicly traded companies. Which means all that BTC is subject to being sold in the overnight markets in exchange for bailouts.
While that's going on, a crash guarantees that the government will print tons of money to guarantee entitlement programs. This will undoubtedly lead to high inflation, in the medium range outlook. So while the immediate deflation of the market crash would see asset prices deflate badly, that would set the conditions for high inflation because of socialist policies that it would trigger. So when prices start to rise, and people are getting stimulus checks on a recurring basis, they will be looking for something to protect their money. Well, we've seen this in the past in third world countries in Africa and South America, and cryptocurrency has always proven to be a reliable place to stash government cheese. You have to consider that hard assets like food aren't always available, and there can be and usually is rationing. So if you have the stimulus money to buy a side of beef, but you're only allowed a few pounds of hamburger a week, you're going to need some place to put that money if you think the price of beef is going to go up 10% by the time next week's shipment comes in.
Long story short, that could be to BTC what the paddles are to a cardiac arrest. It could send BTC soaring into the millions or even billions, and the central banks could find themselves suddenly controlling a large percentage of this asset now back from the dead.
Now, something that's always done in high inflation is a revaluing of the fiat currency. It's a technique that central bankers use to change the psychology to slow inflation, and it's a proven performer. All they do is knock some zeros off, and it takes time for the free market to discover new prices, slowing the inflation. Let's say this time around though they throw in a twist. They introduce a central bank digital currency. So what we would have in this hypothetical scenario is a central bank with lots of BTC that's worth lots of money, issuing its own fiat digital currency. De facto, the value of said digital currency would be a function of the value of the assets held by the issuing central bank, relative to how much digital currency they issue.
So, in summary, I see many potential threats to BTC, but I also see a clear path that's just a logical cause and effect chain, that could ultimately lead to BTC becoming exactly what it was designed to be. And if BTC ultimately succeeds, it's going to make the people who have it filthy rich. Because of its violently deflationary nature, once it reaches a critical mass, there's no stopping it. Those who have it will just continue to get richer, and those who don't will continue to get poorer. It's hard to say when it would reach its final destination, but there are 8 billion people in this world who use 200 trillion dollars in currency. If critical mass is achieved, and BTC starts to become the reserve currency for the world, the price could be difficult to even quantify as a dollar value. But people would stop talking about the value of BTC and start talking about the value of a single Satoshi, because that would be closer to the average person's level of comprehension. Actually, the average person wouldn't use it at all. They would be using derivatives of it, like central bank digital currencies, maybe some altcoins, etc. And those who had actual BTC would be able to generate income without touching the principle by staking and borrowing against it.
My best advice at this point is to stay froggy. Never invest more than you're willing to lose, take profits when it feels high, reinvest those profits when it feels low, and PROTECT THOSE PRIVATE KEYS. The easiest surefire way I've found for the average person to hold BTC themselves is to get a Coldcard and generate the seed offline using dice BUT ONLY AFTER PROVING THE FIRMWARE USING A PYTHON SCRIPT. Just automatically assume that the device was intercepted in the mail and uploaded with malicious firmware. And use it 100% airgapped. Never connect it to the internet. So if you need to spend them, wipe that seed and start over with a new one. The minute you break that airgap, just assume it's compromised. For example, I heard about some random SD cards that had malicious firmware designed to compromise hardware wallets.
Lastly, I would say to never cash out frivolously. If you think it's at an all time high and you want to sell half, with the intention of reinvesting at a lower price, go for it. But people are cashing out to buy stupid stuff they don't need like cars. I can't even tell you how many posts I see of people gloating they bought in at five thousand, then cashed out completely at sixty to buy a new F150. And they think they're so damned smart, and they're so smug about how it's digital beanie babies and how dumb everyone else is going to look. You only look dumb if you invested more than you could afford to lose. But if BTC ultimately succeeds, I kid you not, people will literally die of shame when they realize what they gave up because of their own arrogance and greed. Don't be that person. It's easy to laugh it off if you're the guy who lost his keys by accident, or bought a billion dollar pizza during development, but it's not going to be easy for those people who gave up financial freedom for a now ten year old worthless car, because that's going to represent a failure of their very character, and expose a flaw in them that cuts to their very soul. I feel for those people, and I'm far more afraid of being that person than I am being the person who could have sold at sixty and held to zero. I can live with having missed out on a windfall, but it would be far more difficult to live with knowing that you could have achieved financial freedom for you and your friends and family. Especially with what's coming, and the kind of suffering and human misery it will bring with it, and how the wealthy will be spared from much of it. Regardless of what you think about the economy and geopolitics, we are at the end of a very unsustainable and destructive path, and when that day of reckoning comes it's going to be painful when we're forced to return to sustainable ways of living, and there will be no avoiding the fact that many will go without. So if there's a small chance that a very conservative investment in BTC could spare someone some suffering down the road, I think that's a chance worth taking. Not saying to invest the family fortune, or go hungry, but if it's between buying a new set of golf clubs and buying a little BTC, I'm going with the BTC. The golf clubs will still be there next month when the next paycheck comes around, but the BTC might not be.
The first thing most people don't understand about BTC is that it's a proof of work, vs. a proof of stake system. There are lots of vids explaining the difference, so I won't bore you with the details. The takeaway is that proof of work is more costly, but inherently more secure. The dirty secret behind all these higher performing altcoins with lower fees and faster transaction times is that they are based on proof of stake. People who say BTC is inferior aren't seeing the forest for the trees. While it's inferior for, say, buying a pack of gum, nobody needs that level of security for everyday transactions. It's a little bit like how you're okay using a debit card to buy a pack of gum, but would only buy a house with bank wire. BTC is the same way. If you were to buy a house, you would do a straight BTC transfer on chain, and the ten minutes and 15 dollars in fees would be absolutely nothing to you, and would be far faster and far cheaper than current wire transfer networks. Whereas if you're just buying a pack of gum, you would use some kind of BTC derivative, that would be essentially free and instantaneous. These derivatives are off chain, but get settled on chain in massive blocks of millions of dollars, so the transaction fees are spread out. It's still very secure, though, so gone will be the days of someone stealing your debit card.
There has been a lot of debate in the developer community over enhancing BTC at the expense of security, or keeping it simple and making it more of a reserve style asset. So far the latter has always won, which is why BTC is still relatively slow and expensive. But when you look at other highly secure reserve assets, BTC is still way faster, way more secure in every way, and way cheaper. You can move millions overseas in minutes for a small fraction of a percent, whereas that same transaction through the banking system would take days and cost thousands, and ultimately always involve centralized fiat currencies that could hypothetically change radically in relative value, or even collapse altogether, which is a genuine concern when dealing with non G7 central banks. We here in the west who aren't involved in international trade far underestimate the problems caused by third world banking, and the wrench that it throws in international trade. The petrodollar has been instrumental in mitigating that, but the problem will only be ultimately solved by a global currency. That used to be gold, and the dollar has simply been a stop gap measure in the progress from a physical global currency (gold and silver) to a digital one (possibly BTC).
The second critical piece of information to know about BTC currently is that it probably is in a bubble. While I believe its real value is in the millions, it is currently only a speculative asset, much like a startup company. The hope is that someday in the future, BTC will be a significant reserve currency, and ultimately the world reserve currency. That's what it was designed for, and it doesn't have much utility for anything else. So until it achieves that status, it's still only speculative. Some people argue that a central bank digital currency will drive it out of business, and maybe. But it's important to recognize that no CBDC does what BTC does. They're still centralized, still open to national manipulation (intentionally), and would actually be a step backwards to simply repeat the mistakes of the 1970s. So while you could argue that the powers that be might try to kill BTC, it's still erroneous to say that they can just introduce their own centralized version of a blockchain based currency and accomplish the same end. Not even close.
So understanding that it's still highly speculative, what's driving the price so high right now is twofold. One you have the cost of the network. As mining rewards go down as supply increases, the relative cost of mining goes up, and so does the price. It's not unlike how the price to mine new gold relates heavily to the price of gold. No one is going to operate nodes for BTC if they can't turn a profit, and while it's a definite opportunity the miners aren't getting filthy rich. So that's the good news. There IS a good, rational reason why the price keeps going up. It was designed that way, and due to the reward halving, it will continue to go up so long as people continue to see value in it, and invest in it speculatively.
The bad news is that a cancer has entered into the BTC community. The financial system has reached a paradoxical point where inflation is required to maintain the status quo, but also threatens at every turn to bring the whole thing down. This has caused a grid lock in the normal monetary system, where banks can no longer make new money by lending. In place of giving loans to create new money, banks are taking deposits and reserves and dumping them into speculative investments. They buy up speculative tech like Tesla, and also short it in the derivatives market to hedge their bets. If they do that right, it always guarantees a small profit no matter what, barring implosion of the markets.
At the same time, though, these corporations, in place of selling goods and services, are now having to look to cryptocurrencies as a quick way to make a few bucks to keep their stock prices up. That's why we're seeing these crypto pump and dumps being orchestrated by billionaires and hedge funds. It's a last ditch hail mary kind of play to keep their stocks from collapsing, which keeps the banks from collapsing, which keeps the entire economy temporarily afloat. But like housing in the 2000s, and commercial in 2019, they will ride the horse to death. This isn't sustainable.
Because of that, BTC may be headed for a crash, because it's being manipulated by people who are treating it like something disposable to be used up and thrown away when they're done with it. It's always in peril, because these banks, hedge funds, and corporations who hold so much of it, they will sell it like a used up race horse to a glue factory if and when they need a quick buck to avoid financial ruin.
And the retail investor in crypto isn't much different. If for example we have another crash, you better believe Joe BTC is going to sell to make his house payment, buy food, keep the lights on, pay Johnny's tuition, etc. And I mean you can't blame them, it's not like they're really going to have a choice. But the fact remains that you have a lot of people who have all this equity built up in their crypto holdings, and the economy is doing really badly, which means there might come a day soon when those people are going to desperately need that equity to live on, forcing them to cash in.
There are also very real threats of more Mt Gox type moments. There are lots of exchanges and hardware wallets with unknown security, and also BTC derivatives that could leave investors holding worthless stock and no BTC, much like GLD could leave people without any physical gold. These BTC funds are highly leveraged, so if the price of BTC were to go down significantly, and they became insolvent and couldn't pay the interest on that debt, their companies would go under and the lenders would repossess their BTC, potentially leaving stock holders with the bag. Note also that the fed has been buying junk bonds in companies like Microstrategies that are heavily invested in BTC. In other words, these guys have been borrowing money from the fed in the overnight markets and using it to buy more BTC, essentially using the BTC they already bought with investor money as collateral. It's not really any different than if you invested in a company buying real estate, and said company used the real estate bought with your investment as collateral to get a loan to buy more. If real estate were to collapse, the company would be unable to make payments and the properties would be repossessed by the banks, leaving them and you out in the cold.
The exchanges aren't much better. It's widely known that many if not all exchanges don't have the BTC in their possession to back up all the BTC that customers have stored with them. You BTC on an exchange is just a ledger they keep saying you get x amount of BTC, so they only have to keep on hand what they anticipate people will withdraw. This leads to uh oh moments where people try to withdraw and can't. That's happened with the largest and most well respected exchanges at times. They will play games where they lock accounts and impose unnecessary holding periods. Let's say BTC were to crash and everyone were to sell. The exchange may only have 10% of that on hand, meaning they won't be able to raise the money to pay out all of the accounts. So you might sell and have $20k sitting in the exchange, but might not be able to withdraw it. And if the exchange goes under, you might never get it.
Another threat is the unknown security of many hardware wallets. Since most aren't open source, it's hard to guess whether they can be hacked or not. But the temptation would be very high for someone at a high level in those companies, like a top level programmer, to write themselves a back door. If you're not generating your seeds offline through some kind of entropic method like throwing dice, and proving the firmware independently, you're always trusting the benevolence of the company itself and its programmers. As well as their security. You're trusting they didn't get hacked, that they didn't get punked by a contractor, etc. This being the case, I think the potential if not even the likelihood is there that there will be a mass hack of hardware wallets. Since they're considered iron clad, that will be a major blow to people if it ever happens. Even if it's not a well respected one like Ledger, just the words hardware wallet and hack in a headline will be devastating.
Now all of this is building the potential for something really interesting to happen. If there's a crash, the central banks are going to inherit lots of BTC, in the same manner that they've inherited so many MBSs. People don't realize yet how deep BTC's tentacles have reached into the mainstream financial system. Case in point, BTC now goes down over the weekend, when the stock exchanges are closed, and goes up on Monday. For those who don't know, BTC trades 24/7/365, and normal trading hours didn't used to impact it at all. But now so much of the trading volume is from these derivatives that it's actually tanking on the weekends, because it loses that volume while the stock exchange is closed. What that means is that massive amounts of BTC are now held by banks, hedge funds, and publicly traded companies. Which means all that BTC is subject to being sold in the overnight markets in exchange for bailouts.
While that's going on, a crash guarantees that the government will print tons of money to guarantee entitlement programs. This will undoubtedly lead to high inflation, in the medium range outlook. So while the immediate deflation of the market crash would see asset prices deflate badly, that would set the conditions for high inflation because of socialist policies that it would trigger. So when prices start to rise, and people are getting stimulus checks on a recurring basis, they will be looking for something to protect their money. Well, we've seen this in the past in third world countries in Africa and South America, and cryptocurrency has always proven to be a reliable place to stash government cheese. You have to consider that hard assets like food aren't always available, and there can be and usually is rationing. So if you have the stimulus money to buy a side of beef, but you're only allowed a few pounds of hamburger a week, you're going to need some place to put that money if you think the price of beef is going to go up 10% by the time next week's shipment comes in.
Long story short, that could be to BTC what the paddles are to a cardiac arrest. It could send BTC soaring into the millions or even billions, and the central banks could find themselves suddenly controlling a large percentage of this asset now back from the dead.
Now, something that's always done in high inflation is a revaluing of the fiat currency. It's a technique that central bankers use to change the psychology to slow inflation, and it's a proven performer. All they do is knock some zeros off, and it takes time for the free market to discover new prices, slowing the inflation. Let's say this time around though they throw in a twist. They introduce a central bank digital currency. So what we would have in this hypothetical scenario is a central bank with lots of BTC that's worth lots of money, issuing its own fiat digital currency. De facto, the value of said digital currency would be a function of the value of the assets held by the issuing central bank, relative to how much digital currency they issue.
So, in summary, I see many potential threats to BTC, but I also see a clear path that's just a logical cause and effect chain, that could ultimately lead to BTC becoming exactly what it was designed to be. And if BTC ultimately succeeds, it's going to make the people who have it filthy rich. Because of its violently deflationary nature, once it reaches a critical mass, there's no stopping it. Those who have it will just continue to get richer, and those who don't will continue to get poorer. It's hard to say when it would reach its final destination, but there are 8 billion people in this world who use 200 trillion dollars in currency. If critical mass is achieved, and BTC starts to become the reserve currency for the world, the price could be difficult to even quantify as a dollar value. But people would stop talking about the value of BTC and start talking about the value of a single Satoshi, because that would be closer to the average person's level of comprehension. Actually, the average person wouldn't use it at all. They would be using derivatives of it, like central bank digital currencies, maybe some altcoins, etc. And those who had actual BTC would be able to generate income without touching the principle by staking and borrowing against it.
My best advice at this point is to stay froggy. Never invest more than you're willing to lose, take profits when it feels high, reinvest those profits when it feels low, and PROTECT THOSE PRIVATE KEYS. The easiest surefire way I've found for the average person to hold BTC themselves is to get a Coldcard and generate the seed offline using dice BUT ONLY AFTER PROVING THE FIRMWARE USING A PYTHON SCRIPT. Just automatically assume that the device was intercepted in the mail and uploaded with malicious firmware. And use it 100% airgapped. Never connect it to the internet. So if you need to spend them, wipe that seed and start over with a new one. The minute you break that airgap, just assume it's compromised. For example, I heard about some random SD cards that had malicious firmware designed to compromise hardware wallets.
Lastly, I would say to never cash out frivolously. If you think it's at an all time high and you want to sell half, with the intention of reinvesting at a lower price, go for it. But people are cashing out to buy stupid stuff they don't need like cars. I can't even tell you how many posts I see of people gloating they bought in at five thousand, then cashed out completely at sixty to buy a new F150. And they think they're so damned smart, and they're so smug about how it's digital beanie babies and how dumb everyone else is going to look. You only look dumb if you invested more than you could afford to lose. But if BTC ultimately succeeds, I kid you not, people will literally die of shame when they realize what they gave up because of their own arrogance and greed. Don't be that person. It's easy to laugh it off if you're the guy who lost his keys by accident, or bought a billion dollar pizza during development, but it's not going to be easy for those people who gave up financial freedom for a now ten year old worthless car, because that's going to represent a failure of their very character, and expose a flaw in them that cuts to their very soul. I feel for those people, and I'm far more afraid of being that person than I am being the person who could have sold at sixty and held to zero. I can live with having missed out on a windfall, but it would be far more difficult to live with knowing that you could have achieved financial freedom for you and your friends and family. Especially with what's coming, and the kind of suffering and human misery it will bring with it, and how the wealthy will be spared from much of it. Regardless of what you think about the economy and geopolitics, we are at the end of a very unsustainable and destructive path, and when that day of reckoning comes it's going to be painful when we're forced to return to sustainable ways of living, and there will be no avoiding the fact that many will go without. So if there's a small chance that a very conservative investment in BTC could spare someone some suffering down the road, I think that's a chance worth taking. Not saying to invest the family fortune, or go hungry, but if it's between buying a new set of golf clubs and buying a little BTC, I'm going with the BTC. The golf clubs will still be there next month when the next paycheck comes around, but the BTC might not be.
Chalo
100 TW
Cryptocurrency is backed by nothing-- not even the reputation of the issuer. It's inherently worthless, but it consumes massive energy resources to do routine transactions. The mathematical security of today's existing cryptocurrencies, such as it is, will disappear when there's a further revolution in computing speed that can hasten decryption, like the introduction of quantum computing.
So enjoy your tulip trading, but you'd better be holding something besides tulips when the music stops.
So enjoy your tulip trading, but you'd better be holding something besides tulips when the music stops.
^ My sentiments exactly ^
Besides, it's easier to just buy real estate.
Besides, it's easier to just buy real estate.
Chalo said:
The only thing that has ever backed money, or ever will, is people's belief in the abstraction. It's not dissimilar from any other societal contract that's upheld by culture and commonly held values.
That said, there are forms of money that are easier to manipulate than others. Money must be hard to counterfeit, which is why gold has been the standard for eons.
But even in the ancient world, the need to safely store and move it created fiat systems that were taken advantage of. And nothing has changed in that regard. Just ask Germany how they feel about gold's security after their multidecade fight with the New York Fed to get their gold back, which is ongong.
As far as transaction costs, it's incredibly expensive to store and transport gold. You can even see this on a retail level. To order an ounce of gold, you're going to pay a big premium that's a direct result of the company needing to store and transport it safely. And that's going to be a recurring cost to you, because you will have to pay a bank for a safety deposit box to safely store it.
BTC can literally be safely stored in your brain, and the transaction fees are quite low. For example, the other day, I moved 1k dollars worth of BTC to cold storage, and it only cost 3 dollars in fees. To do the same thing with fiat would have been 30 dollars. It also took only about an hour. Doing that with fiat would have taken at least a business day, potentially up to three.
And again, there are off chain settlement networks like lightning, that allow BTC to be spent on small purchases with virtually zero transaction fees, in the same way that fiat allows for low cost transactions backed by central banks holding real assets.
While I can't say that the abstraction of BTC will persist, it's a possibility that must be accepted. No one can say with any degree of certainty that it won't, though, just like I can't say with any certainty that it will. What I can say though as an informed user is that it does provide real value. If you understand the problems at the root of the system, you see that BTC does have massive potential to all but completely solve them.
The hacking issue is not without merit. But the thing about BTC is that if it were ever in danger of being hacked, the devs and miners would react immediately by strengthening the security. So in that way, BTC will always be one step ahead, because the mining rigs will increase in power alongside any computer that might be used to hack wallets using brute force attacks like what you're suggesting. It's important to note that BTC is protected by the same type of encryption that protects all of our most sensitive military assets. If hackers are able to take down the BTC network, by definition they would also be able to hack into our most sensitive systems and wreak havoc on mankind the likes of which has never been seen. We're talking stuff like killing grids and communications networks, sparking global nuclear war, etc. If the concept of encryption ever fails, we have way more to worry about than someone stealing your BTC.
Chalo
100 TW
Cryptocurrency is backed by nothing, not even the reputation of the issuer.
Best not be holding a bunch of tulips when the music stops.
Best not be holding a bunch of tulips when the music stops.
Chalo said:
That's simply not true. BTC is the most powerful computer network in the world, and represents the greatest financial services provider in the history of the planet.
What does fiat represent? What is it "backed" by? Nothing but the empty promises of a central bank and government that has proven itself to be criminally dishonest and predatory at every turn. The only security they provide comes at gunpoint, and serves their interests only, at the expense of the holders of the currency.
And we can say that assessment is definitively true of every central bank in the history of central banking, from its very inception as a gold storage service. Thousands of central bank backed fiat currencies, none of which lasted more than a few hundred years. Will the dollar be different? The Euro? The Yuan? Highly doubtful, considering the cracks are already starting to show.
What gold brought to highly localized trade eons ago, BTC is now bringing to international trade. An abstract medium of exchange that can't be counterfeited.
The Tulip analogy is a very unfair one. If you want to apply it to something like Dogecoin, fine, but BTC seeks to provide an actual service, and has proven its ability to do so. In a limited sense, it's already providing that service. There are people in third world countries using BTC as we speak, and they don't even know it. More specifically, they're using derivatives of BTC, where the issuing authority holds BTC as a reserve asset, and uses the arbitrage from the settlements to pay for the transaction fees for the debit cards they issue. There are also examples of that very same thing happening in the US and Europe.
Chalo
100 TW
Cryptocurrency is backed by nothing, not even the reputation of the issuer.
Best not be holding a bunch of tulips when the music stops.
Best not be holding a bunch of tulips when the music stops.
stan.distortion
1 kW
- Joined
- Jun 12, 2019
- Messages
- 377
Dollars backed by nothing but the unfulfillable promise of the issuer.
Best not be holding worthless papaer when the music stops.
Best not be holding worthless papaer when the music stops.
Chalo
100 TW
stan.distortion said:
So you're saying that dollars are backed by nothing but something?
A nation's debt and its ability/willingness to pay the debt may be a specious basis for a monetary system, but they aren't nothing. Bitcoin has actual nothing underlying it.
stan.distortion
1 kW
- Joined
- Jun 12, 2019
- Messages
- 377
Chalo said:
Even if that where true, the dollar is backed by debt, a negative, ie. less than nothing. However, proof of work cryptocurrency does have backing and it's right there in the name, proof of work. That's work done, energy converted, every btc cost kw/hr to create and that wouldn't happen unless others where willing to cover that energy cost through work of their own.
That's exactly the same as the dollar, the entire basis of its value is belief and with fiat currencies it's a perfect example of blind faith, we know with absolute certainty that the debts (from personal all the way to national) can never be paid yet we continue to believe it has value and fwiw, the only other common example of that kind of blind faith is religion.
Sure, bury your head in the sand if you like, put your fingers in your ears and go "lalala!" at every positive remark to any form of money other than the holy dollar because it wont change a damn thing. We're the last generation of believers, everyone since has grown up with things like warcraft gold having a firm and solid value. That might seem like a triviality, no better than monopoly money but we're not talking about 5 people sat around a table for a game that might last a few hours, we're talking about millions of people playing for years on end and that's just one single game, one single example of the kind of money that the generations now in early adulthood have known for their entire lives. How do you think your dollar system will look to them when they start adding up the bank charges and wire transfer fees and delays?
Chalo
100 TW
You're conflating the underlying value of Bitcoin with its method of implementation. That's like saying the value of the US dollar is derived from its quality printing, anti-counterfeiting features, and robust distribution network.
Not only is the technical implementation not what backs a currency, but computation intensive transactions in Bitcoin make it unsustainable even on that basis.
From https://www.cnet.com/news/heres-how-much-energy-it-really-takes-to-mine-bitcoin-and-why-people-are-concerned/ :
To put it in e-bike terms, that means you could ride more than 50,000 miles on the juice required to complete one Bitcoin transaction.
The only reason anybody tolerates this amount of flagrant waste is because it's the pretext of a massive speculative bubble. It will be for the best when it's all over, unless you're one of the suckers left holding worthless digits.
Not only is the technical implementation not what backs a currency, but computation intensive transactions in Bitcoin make it unsustainable even on that basis.
From https://www.cnet.com/news/heres-how-much-energy-it-really-takes-to-mine-bitcoin-and-why-people-are-concerned/ :
To put it in e-bike terms, that means you could ride more than 50,000 miles on the juice required to complete one Bitcoin transaction.
The only reason anybody tolerates this amount of flagrant waste is because it's the pretext of a massive speculative bubble. It will be for the best when it's all over, unless you're one of the suckers left holding worthless digits.
stan.distortion
1 kW
- Joined
- Jun 12, 2019
- Messages
- 377
Chalo said:
Changing the target, nice
Keep your head well buried in that sand Yes, those points do give the dollar part of its value, no doubt about that as they're perfectly in line with money as defined by Aristotle more than 2000 years ago. I suggest you read that definition, it's stood the test of time intact and surprisingly few even know it exists.And with that, you're repeating one of the many misconceptions often repeated in the media about transaction costs. Does every dollar transaction include the cost of the enormous amount of electricity used by the banking system, the cost of its buildings, staff, equipment, etc? Yes, it does in a very roundabout way that hides that cost from the consumer and it costs a hell of a lot more than a global cryptocurrency infrastructure that's only handling a tiny fraction of its potential capacity. At current potential capacity the various cryptocurrency projects out there can handle far more than the worlds banking system is currently processing and do it at a far lower cost.
That argument is FUD, plain and simple. I don't like the amount of electricity proof of work consumes but if it's going to be targeted on a cost per transaction basis then make that comparison like-for-like. Comparing an at-capacity network with a competing emerging tech is like saying the cost of roads is unjustified because hardly anyone is using them at 3am. Make the comparison at full capacity for both and make all of that comparison, not just one side of it. Add up what the banking system and all its infrastructure costs and divide by the number of transactions. Not an easy thing to add up but I'm sure some bright spark can manage it (and I guarantee you'll never see the result in the tabloids).
Chalo
100 TW
There are valid reasons to discount the basis of the dollar-- which is the "full faith and credit of the United States of America". It sounds hokey because it is hokey. But that "legal tender for all debts, public and private" bit is binding. Not so with crypto.
There isn't even anything hokey underlying Bitcoin; there's nothing at all. Nobody's credit, no requirement to accept it, and only the faith (if you can call it that) of the fortune seekers who've bought in already.
There isn't even anything hokey underlying Bitcoin; there's nothing at all. Nobody's credit, no requirement to accept it, and only the faith (if you can call it that) of the fortune seekers who've bought in already.
I believe the US dollar is a safe currency, except for inflation. The US government can "print money" as much as it likes, which causes inflation, meaning the existing dollars are worth less.
But there is a price. During the late 1970's, there was "double digit" inflation, and prices started going up faster than wages. Everything...food, gas, rent, electricity.
But there is a price. During the late 1970's, there was "double digit" inflation, and prices started going up faster than wages. Everything...food, gas, rent, electricity.
