I don't see a 10x price increase like 2017 though. I expect less extreme price movements now that bitcoin's market cap is so much higher and more large investors are involved. I think it would take something huge to move the price that much, like a bitcoin ETF approved by the SEC.
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=...
For the sake of the children† and the diversity of the planet‡ let’s hope not, eh? I mean it’s just tremendously wasteful to generate Bitcoin.
I don’t mind it as a concept, I think it’s cool, but fuck me what a waste of energy.
† Have none, don’t care.
‡ This tho.
It's not wasteful if it's providing transactional security.
Just for perspective, there are THREE MILLION ATMs globally. And that's just ATMs, totally ignoring the infrastructure for the 60,000+ global banking institutions.
Also, no one is happy about the energy consumption and the centralization of miners in China and subsidized dirty plants, which makes an eventual change to a Proof-of-Stake protocol likely as it matures.
When we get to that point, are you going to start using crypto or are you just going to find another reason to bash it?
Bitcoin is actively user hostile, has a worse wealth distribution than any banana republic, the majority of it is in the control of criminals and shady actors, no I don’t want them to be the wealthiest people on earth while the rest of us fight for scraps. Currencies benefit from their ability to respond to shock, and to the addition of new market actors. Deflation only serves to entrench existing wealth.
There’s literally nothing to like about crypto. Nothing. People deserve better than what you’re shilling.
Crime, corruption and fight for power exists independently of what people use for currency. "Criminals and shady actors" also control significant amounts of paper money yet you are not here trying to argue against people to use paper money, right?
> I don’t want them to be the wealthiest people on earth while the rest of us fight for scraps.
Are you living in North America or the Euro zone? Then you are already top dog, dude.
> Deflation only serves to entrench existing wealth
Do the existing inflationary policies are helping out in reducing inequality? Who were the greatest beneficiaries of these recent stimulus packages, QE, etc?
> There’s literally nothing to like about crypto.
I'm pretty sure there are, you just don't want to acknowledge it. But most importantly, the question that I pose to every perennial-crypto-critic: Do you think that the status quo is the best that we can do? If yes, have you stopped to look at all the existing issues with the global financial system and can you honestly make a case that they are all insurmountable problems? If no, do you accept that we need to have people experimenting with alternatives?
“If you’re living in North America or the euro zone you’re probably top dog”
What? I’m saying that the overwhelming majority of Bitcoin is owned by a small cluster of criminals and everyone else has to fight for scraps of the chain. Those people aren’t who should be wealthy in the new world order. That’s not better than the existing system, it’s worse, and we deserve better.
“Do existing financial policies help reduce inequality”
It requires a combination of fiscal and monetary policy but I do know that moving to deflationary strictly makes the problem worse by rewarding people who sit on money and don’t move it.
I reiterate there’s nothing to like about crypto. It’s all hot garbage. Is the existing system better? 100 times yes. Is the existing system perfect? Lord no. But I don’t think we should replace it with something strictly worse for the sake of a change. We all saw how 2016 played out. I’m in no rush to 2016 our money.
The one thing that I'd like to point out is that most of your arguments are either exclusive to Bitcoin (not crypto) and/or a social-economic-political issue that has nothing to do with the technology of crypto or blockchain.
Take your speculation of the identity of Satoshi. Let's say it's Le Roux. So what? First, he is in jail, which is more that we can say about a lot of other Criminal Lords. Second, having a bitcoin stash does not get him out of there. Third, even if you pull the "he can use his stash to order bad things to happen" argument you know that the same thing would be true if he was in control of a gold stash or a Swiss account. Lastly, even if managed to get out and managed to prove that he was Satoshi, he would not be a leader of a "new world order" were his ethics and morality would suddenly be glorified.
Also, you confusing Bitcoin with crypto leads to the interesting position where you sound both as a Bitcoin maxi and a Buttcoiner. Case in point: if you are right about "small cluster of criminals owning a lot of Bitcoin", there will be no need to "fight for scraps of the chain". What will happen is simply is that those will start using another chain. When Tether does go out in flames (which I am with you and I hope they do as soon as possible), Ethereum will go on. Fuck, even if you are against ETH you can still use ETC, so where is the part that people are being forced to adopt one chain over another?
To sum up: don't throw the baby with the bathwater. It's not because Bitcoin at this point in time has a lot of issues that crypto/blockchain should be considered "all hot garbage". Your attitude is reactionary and leaves no room for any kind of change.
When that ends of course nobody will pay the actual $80-100 per transaction in electricity actually required to secure the network making it vulnerable to a 51% attack.
It's not really that simple. There is a different breakdown when you look at individual vs global costs. There is a cost to an individual for storing gold - e.g. building a vault, hiring a guard etc. This cost was the original incentive scheme behind the early banks - if we pool our gold storage then we can pool our security costs. Beyond that individual cost there is no additional global cost for storage.
Bitcoin is free to store for an individual. Once funds are stored at an address in the blockchain they will stay there. Although the global cost is huge it is invisible at the individual level - nobody needs to participate in mining the chain to hold bitcoin.
History suggests that individuals favor situations where the costs have been socialized and are not visible at the individual level.
The cost to store Bitcoin is the cost to secure the network, and its outrageous. Further it scales linearly with the price of Bitcoin as block reward value does.
Ha, no. Theres a thing called "security" and if you don't pay for it your gold evaporates or walks away.
Science says we’re already pretty much fucked if we don’t go full-on panic mode, and here we are, still wasting this opportunity, if not to keep our feet dry, at least to keep our chin above water...
Not to mention it likely makes international arms and drug dealing Bond villain Paul “Solotshi” Calder Le Roux the wealthiest man on earth.
[1] https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption
[2] https://www.wired.com/story/was-bitcoin-created-by-this-inte...
Also, that guy is not Satoshi. Satoshi is almost certainly dead, and was probably Hal Finney.
Ok I provided a detailed article explaining why Paul Le Roux is probably Satoshi and you responded with nothing.
Your $80 is based on the current block reward which was set totally arbitrarily and is not in any way an estimate of the actual amount necessary to prevent 51% attacks in the future after the block reward disappears.
They are basically brothers who hate each other.
So something most be changing - either wallet software is preferring to use new addresses more often, or something else, like more distinct users.
They're not excluding old, never-reused addresses, so the number of addresses is always increasing as every transaction adds more.
What they tweeted was that this rate of increase has itself increased by about 20%. Since blocks have been full during this period, this means the difference lies in the type of the transaction. If the current transactions are more of a fan-out (pay multiple parties) and less consolidation (sweeping payments made to the same institution), then that makes sense.
And indeed, right now there is a larger than usual outflow from exchanges. Maybe people are getting nervous about holding increasingly more valuable bitcoin on exchanges and are pulling their funds off? That alone could explain a 20% increase in this meaningless "address count" metric.