To be "backed", a currency must be directly tradable with whatever it is backed by. That is what "backed by" means. It is common to make the claim that Btc or crypto in general is backed by energy, yet none of those currencies can be exchanged for energy. (not counting paying your electrical bill or buying batteries) Indeed, none of them can be exchanged for anything at all unless both people believe it can be.
In the case of an actual asset, like PMs, there is no worry about whether or not your PMs can be exchanged for something else because they have intrinsic value (value having nothing to do with belief, but rather value that has been given to an asset by Natural Law or the Universe itself). This is not a complicated concept, yet because Olympic level mental gymnastics is required, and the brainwashing so well developed for the True Believers, this concept is very difficult for any Btc proponent to understand, yet the easiest thing in the world for everyone else. The problem is, those who have invested in Btc or other such useless currencies must create belief to justify their often "all in" investment, and thus must miss out on the simplicity of this concept. It is because of this contrived belief that one allows themselves to make up such nonsense as:
Btc is backed by energy
No it is not. Not even in the slightest little bit, or under the most wild contrivance of definitions. You can't trade your Btc for energy in any direct way. There is zero "energy value" there.
What is petrodollar backed by? Oil, a.k.a. ENERGY
Well, I disagree that the "petrodollar" actually existed in the sense this idea is used. It was only a useful concept for countries, not people, and even there, it was total bullshit. Regardless, even assuming that the petrodollar really was backed by oil, the key there is, the petrodollar is backed by Oil, not "energy". Oil has an intrinsic energy property (as the basis of all organic chemistry, it has a lot more value than just "energy"). This energy value, and all of its other chemical properties that make it useful chemical stock for actual physical goods (plastics, pharmaceuticals, tire rubber, etc., etc.) are properties given to it by the Universe. Those properties can't be taken away by changing belief. They are fundamental AKA intrinsic. Btc on the other hand has no properties like that, nor can it be directly exchanged for something like that ("backed by").
Do you see the difference? The petrodollar is backed byactual physical usable assets. Btc takes energy to make. That energy is lost to entropy forever. There is no backing there. You can't get it back to do future work. The mining of Btc is the work. That work is now done and lost. We had energy, which was positive, the mining happens, and the "total energy column" is now a loss. That loss is called "backed by" by Btc proponents. That is what mental gymnastics looks like, in this case a lie that a loss of a thing is a gain, or storage, of a thing.
It is utter nonsense, and yet smart people are still confused by this simple concept.
That is the power of bias; the need for black to be white because of the potential for personal loss . When you build your house on sand, you need to believe the ocean, sitting 50 feet away, will never rise high enough to take out your foundation. It doesn't matter that that's not how things actually work--eventually there will be a storm--what matters is the investment. The cost of being wrong is so high that people literally stick their head in the sand to try to protect themselves from their inevitable doom.
Most correctly it is CONVERSION from energy to a infinitely divisible, but finite quantity software (digital) asset that can be moved to any cyber or physical location with nearly zero cost. This may be as close as we ever get to actually carrying around a packet of actual energy (or energy equivalent) in our pockets for anything other than gold/silver coins (which I also advocate for). Direct conversion back to energy is possible if one uses Bitcoin to buy physical assets that have energy resources without intermediate conversion to $. BRICs is working on one of these mechanisms now.
Gabriel's horn paradox discussion and the details of how it works in sections 5.11.2 through 5.11.3 in Softwar are quite mindblowing. I am still processing and re-reading to understand the actual functional mechanisms.
I use the multiple bucket strategy of cash, land, silver, Bitcoin, and silver/bitcoin/shorted stocks. Note that you can hold MSTR, MARA, and TSLA stocks self-custody at transfer agent. These three are 1,2,4 in terms of Bitcoin held on the balance sheet. This is the current best workaround of Bitcoin exchange transfer to private wallet restrictions (KYC bullshit), IMO.
Most correctly it is CONVERSION from energy to a infinitely divisible, but finite quantity software (digital) asset that can be moved to any cyber or physical location with nearly zero cost.
This is the description of a technology, not a currency. I agree that the technology can be used as an aid to create a currency. It can be used to create all sorts of currencies. It can even be used as an accounting device (currency) to back actual assets. The confusion comes from conflating a technology with a currency. Btc is not a currency except through the beliefs created by a literal ponzi scam that convinces people that it is.
This may be as close as we ever get to actually carrying around a packet of actual energy
Completely false statement. Btc is not a storage of energy. No matter how you are carrying your crypto, you are NOT carrying energy. This statement is utter nonsense and has not one iota to do with reality.
Direct conversion back to energy is possible if one uses Bitcoin to buy physical assets that have energy resources
That is NOT "conversion back to energy," that is convincing someone who has batteries for sale to take part in your scam.
If I hold silver and I find someone who wants the physical properties that silver has (for electronics, or making jewelry, or heat conduction engineering, or they just find it pretty, etc.) I don't have to convince anyone of anything, they will just trade me for it. The value is already there.
Btc doesn't have a single drop of that type of value; it is utterly worthless. Just because you have True Believers drinking the Kool-Aid doesn't mean the Kool-Aid isn't poison. The MOMENT there exists a crypto that is backed by a real asset and it really works as a real asset exchange, with all the necessary conveniences for a currency, Btc and all of their ilk will crash as fast and hard as a 3 year old trying to drive a semi.
Btc and their ilk fulfill a need and they use a technology to do it. That tech is cool stuff. I am a proponent. But the tech can be tied to real assets. Once that happens, people won't have to lie to themselves (and everyone else) about it's value.
I feel like DC is created out of think air. Let a computer run to “mine” a currency. The people that set this currency up what are they getting out of it all? You don’t set up something complicated that a computer has to solve without pocketing part of the coins yourself to get people to buy or trade you for a product and it has no real value except what you convince someone it has. Maybe we all need to make our own currency and mine it ourselves it will just cost us some $ on our power bill
All reasonable arguements. As you are implying here: Not all of the pieces are yet in place to allow Bitcoin to fully function as a currency as easily and fluidly as standard currency like a silver coin. The key questions to consider are: Does Bitcoin represent a store of value (dollar terms), and will it continue to increase in value (dollar terms) for logical, non-speculative reasons related to how it actually functions relative to the Bitcoin network (and hashrate)?
It does have value. The value is all of the energy consumed to create the Bitcoin, but also all the energy required to try and attack or hack the nodes and algorithm. This is represented by the hashrate. Hashrate keeps growing until it cannot be reasonably attacked by a single bad actor. We are already at the point where all Bitcoin miners and users worldwide would have to work together to pooling ALL of their energy to even try to attack the Bitcoin network. It appears to have reached a critical thresh-hold now, which allows for development of the rest of the mechanisms needed to turn it into a typical currency.
Bitcoin becomes worthless (temporarily?) if all of the world's energy grids AND every node of the internet gets destroyed at the same time (this is mathematically represented by the current hashrate). Given the power of nuclear weapons, this is not impossible now, but it will be very soon. Think about that. Even deployment of all the world's nuclear weapons simultaneously to destroy the Bitcoin network and world's energy grids will soon not be enough energy to fully stop it. It is a virtual SkyNET energy weapon system when fully deployed, but being deployed to save humanity rather than to destroy us. You may not fully understand this until you read section 5.10 of Softwar.
The value is all of the energy consumed to create the Bitcoin, but also all the energy required to try and attack or hack the nodes and algorithm.
This is a lie. This energy has no value. A thing has value if it is usable. In this case, all of that energy has already been lost to heat. It's all gone. It is non-usable energy. These arguments for Btc being "energy based" take a shit all over basic physics (specifically our ideas of entropy). ALL OF THE ENERGY REQUIRED FOR BTC IS USED UP!!!
It stores no energy. It stores no value. It is WORTHLESS except as a technology. But it is infinitely divisible (effectively). As a technology 0.0000001 Btc is just as valuable as 1,000,000 Btc. So as a technology, it has value. It can be used to create things, like say, a real asset backed currency (though there are better block chain techs than Btc, so it's really not a very good one in that regard). But it's value is not tied to the number that you have, thus it has no measure based intrinsic value.
We are already at the point where all Bitcoin miners and users worldwide would have to work together to pooling ALL of their energy to even try to attack the Bitcoin network.
This is an argument for it as a technology, not as a valueless currency.
Like everyone else, all of your arguments for Btc are either completely false, or are arguments for it as a technology. These arguments completely ignore the fact that it's usability as a tech is just as valuable no matter how much you have.
All non-asset backed currencies are worthless. We have been trained to believe in them. Once the scam is fully revealed, and we allow ourselves to have access to other means of economic exchange, not a single person will hold on to Btc et al. Not one. Why? Because it is a scam, pure and simple. Eventually that will be obvious to everyone.
If there is enough bitcoins able to be mined for each person in the world to have one coin what would that coin be worth? Would it buy a house or a loaf of bread. Like how is the value of it not able to be manipulated? If I have 10 and you have none then one would hold a lot of value to you if you need to buy something and you would trade something of greater value to get the coin if you needed it to pay a bill or get something
Bitcoin is much more than a currency based on my reading of "Softwar". Many are missing some of the other aspects of how it can be "weaponized" to make typical kinetic warfare obsolete. This is likely the longer term mission of why it was created.
It is much more reasonable to expect silver/gold coins and/or silver certificates to fullfill the "replacement currency" or "currency backing" in the short to medium term, but Bitcoin is likely the next iteration after that once fully developed. Many of the potentials related to currency have yet to happen, but they are clearly sitting there ready and waiting when humanity is ready for it. This appears to be the purpose of how it was created. Foundation first. The roof comes later.
To be "backed", a currency must be directly tradable with whatever it is backed by. That is what "backed by" means. It is common to make the claim that Btc or crypto in general is backed by energy, yet none of those currencies can be exchanged for energy. (not counting paying your electrical bill or buying batteries) Indeed, none of them can be exchanged for anything at all unless both people believe it can be.
In the case of an actual asset, like PMs, there is no worry about whether or not your PMs can be exchanged for something else because they have intrinsic value (value having nothing to do with belief, but rather value that has been given to an asset by Natural Law or the Universe itself). This is not a complicated concept, yet because Olympic level mental gymnastics is required, and the brainwashing so well developed for the True Believers, this concept is very difficult for any Btc proponent to understand, yet the easiest thing in the world for everyone else. The problem is, those who have invested in Btc or other such useless currencies must create belief to justify their often "all in" investment, and thus must miss out on the simplicity of this concept. It is because of this contrived belief that one allows themselves to make up such nonsense as:
No it is not. Not even in the slightest little bit, or under the most wild contrivance of definitions. You can't trade your Btc for energy in any direct way. There is zero "energy value" there.
Well, I disagree that the "petrodollar" actually existed in the sense this idea is used. It was only a useful concept for countries, not people, and even there, it was total bullshit. Regardless, even assuming that the petrodollar really was backed by oil, the key there is, the petrodollar is backed by Oil, not "energy". Oil has an intrinsic energy property (as the basis of all organic chemistry, it has a lot more value than just "energy"). This energy value, and all of its other chemical properties that make it useful chemical stock for actual physical goods (plastics, pharmaceuticals, tire rubber, etc., etc.) are properties given to it by the Universe. Those properties can't be taken away by changing belief. They are fundamental AKA intrinsic. Btc on the other hand has no properties like that, nor can it be directly exchanged for something like that ("backed by").
Do you see the difference? The petrodollar is backed by actual physical usable assets. Btc takes energy to make. That energy is lost to entropy forever. There is no backing there. You can't get it back to do future work. The mining of Btc is the work. That work is now done and lost. We had energy, which was positive, the mining happens, and the "total energy column" is now a loss. That loss is called "backed by" by Btc proponents. That is what mental gymnastics looks like, in this case a lie that a loss of a thing is a gain, or storage, of a thing.
It is utter nonsense, and yet smart people are still confused by this simple concept.
That is the power of bias; the need for black to be white because of the potential for personal loss . When you build your house on sand, you need to believe the ocean, sitting 50 feet away, will never rise high enough to take out your foundation. It doesn't matter that that's not how things actually work--eventually there will be a storm--what matters is the investment. The cost of being wrong is so high that people literally stick their head in the sand to try to protect themselves from their inevitable doom.
Most correctly it is CONVERSION from energy to a infinitely divisible, but finite quantity software (digital) asset that can be moved to any cyber or physical location with nearly zero cost. This may be as close as we ever get to actually carrying around a packet of actual energy (or energy equivalent) in our pockets for anything other than gold/silver coins (which I also advocate for). Direct conversion back to energy is possible if one uses Bitcoin to buy physical assets that have energy resources without intermediate conversion to $. BRICs is working on one of these mechanisms now.
Gabriel's horn paradox discussion and the details of how it works in sections 5.11.2 through 5.11.3 in Softwar are quite mindblowing. I am still processing and re-reading to understand the actual functional mechanisms.
I use the multiple bucket strategy of cash, land, silver, Bitcoin, and silver/bitcoin/shorted stocks. Note that you can hold MSTR, MARA, and TSLA stocks self-custody at transfer agent. These three are 1,2,4 in terms of Bitcoin held on the balance sheet. This is the current best workaround of Bitcoin exchange transfer to private wallet restrictions (KYC bullshit), IMO.
This is the description of a technology, not a currency. I agree that the technology can be used as an aid to create a currency. It can be used to create all sorts of currencies. It can even be used as an accounting device (currency) to back actual assets. The confusion comes from conflating a technology with a currency. Btc is not a currency except through the beliefs created by a literal ponzi scam that convinces people that it is.
Completely false statement. Btc is not a storage of energy. No matter how you are carrying your crypto, you are NOT carrying energy. This statement is utter nonsense and has not one iota to do with reality.
That is NOT "conversion back to energy," that is convincing someone who has batteries for sale to take part in your scam.
If I hold silver and I find someone who wants the physical properties that silver has (for electronics, or making jewelry, or heat conduction engineering, or they just find it pretty, etc.) I don't have to convince anyone of anything, they will just trade me for it. The value is already there.
Btc doesn't have a single drop of that type of value; it is utterly worthless. Just because you have True Believers drinking the Kool-Aid doesn't mean the Kool-Aid isn't poison. The MOMENT there exists a crypto that is backed by a real asset and it really works as a real asset exchange, with all the necessary conveniences for a currency, Btc and all of their ilk will crash as fast and hard as a 3 year old trying to drive a semi.
Btc and their ilk fulfill a need and they use a technology to do it. That tech is cool stuff. I am a proponent. But the tech can be tied to real assets. Once that happens, people won't have to lie to themselves (and everyone else) about it's value.
I feel like DC is created out of think air. Let a computer run to “mine” a currency. The people that set this currency up what are they getting out of it all? You don’t set up something complicated that a computer has to solve without pocketing part of the coins yourself to get people to buy or trade you for a product and it has no real value except what you convince someone it has. Maybe we all need to make our own currency and mine it ourselves it will just cost us some $ on our power bill
All reasonable arguements. As you are implying here: Not all of the pieces are yet in place to allow Bitcoin to fully function as a currency as easily and fluidly as standard currency like a silver coin. The key questions to consider are: Does Bitcoin represent a store of value (dollar terms), and will it continue to increase in value (dollar terms) for logical, non-speculative reasons related to how it actually functions relative to the Bitcoin network (and hashrate)?
It does have value. The value is all of the energy consumed to create the Bitcoin, but also all the energy required to try and attack or hack the nodes and algorithm. This is represented by the hashrate. Hashrate keeps growing until it cannot be reasonably attacked by a single bad actor. We are already at the point where all Bitcoin miners and users worldwide would have to work together to pooling ALL of their energy to even try to attack the Bitcoin network. It appears to have reached a critical thresh-hold now, which allows for development of the rest of the mechanisms needed to turn it into a typical currency.
Bitcoin becomes worthless (temporarily?) if all of the world's energy grids AND every node of the internet gets destroyed at the same time (this is mathematically represented by the current hashrate). Given the power of nuclear weapons, this is not impossible now, but it will be very soon. Think about that. Even deployment of all the world's nuclear weapons simultaneously to destroy the Bitcoin network and world's energy grids will soon not be enough energy to fully stop it. It is a virtual SkyNET energy weapon system when fully deployed, but being deployed to save humanity rather than to destroy us. You may not fully understand this until you read section 5.10 of Softwar.
This is a lie. This energy has no value. A thing has value if it is usable. In this case, all of that energy has already been lost to heat. It's all gone. It is non-usable energy. These arguments for Btc being "energy based" take a shit all over basic physics (specifically our ideas of entropy). ALL OF THE ENERGY REQUIRED FOR BTC IS USED UP!!!
It stores no energy. It stores no value. It is WORTHLESS except as a technology. But it is infinitely divisible (effectively). As a technology 0.0000001 Btc is just as valuable as 1,000,000 Btc. So as a technology, it has value. It can be used to create things, like say, a real asset backed currency (though there are better block chain techs than Btc, so it's really not a very good one in that regard). But it's value is not tied to the number that you have, thus it has no measure based intrinsic value.
This is an argument for it as a technology, not as a valueless currency.
Like everyone else, all of your arguments for Btc are either completely false, or are arguments for it as a technology. These arguments completely ignore the fact that it's usability as a tech is just as valuable no matter how much you have.
All non-asset backed currencies are worthless. We have been trained to believe in them. Once the scam is fully revealed, and we allow ourselves to have access to other means of economic exchange, not a single person will hold on to Btc et al. Not one. Why? Because it is a scam, pure and simple. Eventually that will be obvious to everyone.
If there is enough bitcoins able to be mined for each person in the world to have one coin what would that coin be worth? Would it buy a house or a loaf of bread. Like how is the value of it not able to be manipulated? If I have 10 and you have none then one would hold a lot of value to you if you need to buy something and you would trade something of greater value to get the coin if you needed it to pay a bill or get something
Thank you u/Slyver - Beautifully and intelligently articulated - with poise and tact.
I'd say something with similar points, but it would come out "real shitty".
Thanks for using your gifts as the voice of reason.
Bitcoin is much more than a currency based on my reading of "Softwar". Many are missing some of the other aspects of how it can be "weaponized" to make typical kinetic warfare obsolete. This is likely the longer term mission of why it was created.
It is much more reasonable to expect silver/gold coins and/or silver certificates to fullfill the "replacement currency" or "currency backing" in the short to medium term, but Bitcoin is likely the next iteration after that once fully developed. Many of the potentials related to currency have yet to happen, but they are clearly sitting there ready and waiting when humanity is ready for it. This appears to be the purpose of how it was created. Foundation first. The roof comes later.