lottin

No, I have a background in finance.

> according to calculations by Lyn Alden

But what "calculations" is she doing exactly? The source that she's quoting says 53.7% not 93.0% [1].

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBST01122

If you think that a business can remain in business after its revenue shrinks by a factor of 8 without wage costs adjusting accordingly, you need a reality check.

Not by any stretch of the imagination. A highly volatile asset isn't suitable for storing value reliably. This is because the chances of you having to liquidate your position at a loss are very high.

The ambiguity has to do with the fact that we don't know for sure which blockchain will prevail, because the protocol is unenforceable.

If you fork the bitcoin blockchain you have now two ledgers, each one telling you that a certain number of bitcoins really exist. Who is to say that one is right and the other is wrong? In this scenario, it's debatable how many bitcoins are in existence.

Bitcoin has no governance mechanism for managing the money supply. If it was adopted as money, governments would have to implement some mechanism to manage the bitcoin supply, just like they did under the gold standard. Therefore it doesn't solve any principal-agent problem.

If it did, your salary must have shrunk by 87.5% (or the company that you work for would have gone out of business).

"The data" that you link to doesn't support your assertion that people in third world countries use bitcoin to protect themselves from hyperinflation.

Also USD and Euro are NOT great assets to hold. People only hold cash because they need it for transactions purposes.

I really don't get his "technological vision". I don't know why anyone would prefer his "decentralized stack" over the "traditional stack" that he intends to replace. He doesn't even try to convince us about why it is better.

I first read about Bitcoin on Slashdot. I thought it was a stupid idea back then, and I think it's a stupid idea now. Buying bitcoin in 2008 would have been a terrible investment decision regardless of whatever result it might have produced. If you don't understand that an investment decision can't be evaluated after the fact on the basis of the outcome of single random event you know nothing about investing.

What is this then?

https://www.osfi-bsif.gc.ca/Eng/osfi-bsif/med/Pages/basel23_...

> The real value in crypto is having a currency that isn't subjected to the whims of governments and the people that control monetary policy alongside the massive payment networks like Visa and MasterCard. Controlling the flow of money allows pseudo bans on things the people that control those systems don't like.

Would you say the same is true of arms trafficking or contraband in general? Personally, I can't think of a reason why a society wouldn't want to control who and what goes into and out of its territory.

Canada follows Basel rules for banking, which are much more complicated than that.

You said: "Hoarding/saving for long periods of time is bad because it discourages people from taking risks by putting resources to productive use"

And later you added that by "saving" you meant specifically "not spending".

Then "taking risks by putting resources to productive use" is just a fancy way of saying "producing"

So, you're saying that people not spending is bad because it discourages people from producing.

In a market economy, the optimal level of production is the level that satisfies the desired level of consumption. If people want to save more, and therefore consume less, and as a result we also produce less, that's not bad. That's how the economy is supposed to work.

I understand it fine, I just don't agree with it.

The whole point of an economy is NOT to encourage people to produce things. The point of producing is to satisfy a demand for consumption, and individuals choose their level of consumption according to their preferences and budget constraints. They don't need to be encouraged to consume. That doesn't make any sense.

Maybe 'spending' is a better word, yes. However, 'consumption' isn't entirely inaccurate. Investment is the production of capital goods, and the production of capital goods involves consumption.

The idea that people need to be encouraged to consume (consumption being the opposite of saving) I don't think is supported by economic theory.

According to the internet this coin is worth between $45 and $2150, depending on the condition, but its weight in silver is only worth $18.40 [1]

[1] https://www.ngccoin.com/coin-explorer/united-states/dollars/...

Interference absolutely does matter. Interference manifests itself in the form of a foreign accent, which most people have when they speak a second language. You're making an extraordinary claim, namely that you're able to speak a second language without a foreign accent. I find your claim extremely unlikely to be true, especially since you provide no evidence and you've shown that you know very little about language acquisition.

Babies haven't already acquired another language, when they're learning to speak, and so there's no interference. That's not the case when someone learns a second language later in life.

> "Quid" is longer.

Feel free to post a voice recording, so we can check.

Yeah, like I said, it's most unlikely that you're using vowel length correctly. You can't copy something you're not aware of. For example, without looking it up, would you say 'quit' and 'quid' are pronounced with the same vowel length or not?

Without proper knowledge of English phonetics and dialects, this method isn't going to take you very far. For example, in English, vowel length carries phonetic information, whereas in other languages it does not. If you mother tongue happens to fall in the latter category, it's extremely unlikely that you'll figure out how vowel length works, or even that you have to pay attention to it.

There's no such thing as a 'perfect' accent. Do you mean a standard accent?

When I was young I struggled to fit in with others. I didn't know what to do so that other people would like me. As an older adult, I understood that everyone respects and appreciates someone who can deal with problems and get things done, in other words, a useful person. This is all there's to it. A big part of it is getting physically in shape. A big strong man is perceived as a useful man. I wish I figured this out earlier.

> That's the source of money, and the source of the price level.

What do you mean?

Because you end up replacing one population with another. In other words, the remedy is worse than the disease.

Accountants follow accounting standards. Are you being obtuse?

Yes, it is. That's why we don't know what things like the ISS are actually worth.

It's the only way we have to measure value. And in order to test a theory of value at some point you'll have to measure value.