Conservatives and Bitcoin

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gounion
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Conservatives and Bitcoin

Post by gounion »

Oh, the hypocrisy!

For the last 60 years, I've listened to the conservative bullshit about money. How it's HORRIBLE that FDR took us off the gold standard, where paper money could be traded for gold at any time, and the worth of that paper money was tied to gold.

Of course, as our population growns and our economy grows, there isn't enough gold in the world to do such a thing. But logic was never their strong point.

So for all these years they've screamed about the gold standard, and how our monetary system was all fake, and we needed REAL money.

But now, suddenly, they've went nuts over bitcoin and all these other crypto currencies. So I guess they've suddenly decided they want pretend money.

Of course, the reason is they think they'll get rich. But it shows they never REALLY believed the bullshit they were peddling about the gold standard. It was just a way to attack liberals.
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ProfX
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Re: Conservatives and Bitcoin

Post by ProfX »

What I find interesting about Bitcoin is we can talk about the ephemerality of other kinds of money, but Bitcoin (AFAIK) is the only one that basically could be wiped out with an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP). Say what you want about nutty goldbugs keeping lots of heavy bars under their bed, at least an EMP will not cause all those bars to vanish.

There's a Bitcoin ATM now in one of the local malls. Dunno what it issues you. A tiny piece of paper which says somewhere out there on some server in the cloud you have X amount of bitcoin. Now I'm no goldbug, but ... the bottom line is Bitcoin is as useful as which vendors and merchants will accept it. Some will, some won't. I'm also no Luddite, and while in theory your bank account can be hacked too, the security on that is pretty good, but from what I've read some of the Bitcoin servers don't seem very well secured, and ... that's not a good thing. Server gets hacked. "I had 20 Bitcoins." Uh huh. There's no FDIC which will help you get back the ones you lost, and can you prove it? :D

The reason that conservatives are crazy for crypto (not just Bitcoin) is it is untraceable digital currency. The buyer and seller and transaction can remain hidden from that sinister thang known as the "gubmint". You can buy stuff on the Internet, and buyer, seller, and transaction remain untraced and undetected. Hidden from the taxman, for one thing. Now, BTW, point out this also could help crypto-owning members of ISIS buy bombs and rocket launchers on the Net, too, and they suddenly get real quiet.

The Ikean - as I said he had his moments before he went off the deep end - did point out, correctly, if the government and society collapses, even your gold bars are only as useful as I guess you'd find throwing them at the skulls of people coming to steal your remaining food supplies. The reality is even gold bars are only worth something because other people in society accept them as having material value. There is a famous story of when the Spanish conquistadores arrived in one of the South American cities and found one of the temples covered in gold leaf and they asked the Indians there if they could have the gold and they said - "Sure? Why not? It's pretty and we use it to cover our temples, but if you really want it ... "

I don't think they really understood how badly the Spaniards wanted it, which is why they proceeded to enslave so many and put them to work hauling it out of mines.
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Re: Conservatives and Bitcoin

Post by gounion »

Here's the reality: MONEY ISN'T REAL. It's a construct of people to make trade far easier. I don't know how a modern capitalist society can function without it. But you can't have a monetary system based upon a finite amount of gold, when the population grows and people create all kinds of wealth. I mean, every time Boeing creates a new jetliner, that's a GREAT deal of wealth created out of a pile of raw materials. So, on a gold standard, there'd be less and less money available. It just doesn't work.

But the only way money works is that people have confidence that when they sell something, the money they receive will also buy things.

So, we're basically clapping to keep Tinkerbell alive.

The government backing the monetary system is what gives everyone the confidence in it. Our government ensures a steady, reliable monetary system and supply.

But the nutjobs on the right think they can get rich with bitcoin. Obviously they never learned a damned thing from 1929.

Idiots.
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ProfX
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Re: Conservatives and Bitcoin

Post by ProfX »

gounion wrote: Sat Jan 15, 2022 9:40 am The government backing the monetary system is what gives everyone the confidence in it. Our government ensures a steady, reliable monetary system and supply.
You are not wrong, good sir. If you have a dollar bill and can still find one :D , there is something on there that says it is backed by the U.S. Treasury and the full confidence and trust of the U.S. government, so everybody will take it, from the parakeet seller down the road to the guy selling DVDs from a blanket on the sidewalk. Not everybody will take Bitcoin (or any other cryptocurrency), so no, it is not "universal tender".

Money is a social construct, but is my favorite example of why social constructs are pretty darn real. Yes, it is a social construct. Even if you are using a check or a debit card or ApplePay or Zelle, the merchant is taking it because some bank out there says you're good for what you're paying. Oh, and BTW, if you're not, you might be hearing about some overdraft fees, or going to jail - if the transaction goes through. On the other hand, as you rummage through the dumpster looking for food as you live homeless on the street, keep ranting that money isn't real ... and see how far that gets you.

To be fair, conservative goldbugs are increasingly a fringe even within an increasingly Qcumber fringe Rethug party. You can't find many these days. If you can, they will rant about how Ron Paul really won the 2008 election, or the 16th Amendment and Federal Reserve are un-Constitutional, or how every Cabinet department except for Defense should be eliminated. Equally nutty shit like that. BTW, if you want to see them froth at the mouth, it takes three words: "fractional reserve banking". :D

Ron loved to talk about the Austrian School of Economics. (Von Mises, Von Hayek). Basically, it's Friedman's neoliberalism with one deletion: they don't even want the government with any regulation of banking, or control over the monetary supply. No Fed - no Central Bank - oh and BTW Ron felt states should be allowed to print their own currency. :roll: It's neoliberalism with the stupid dialed to 11.
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Re: Conservatives and Bitcoin

Post by gounion »

ProfX wrote: Sat Jan 15, 2022 10:46 am You are not wrong, good sir. If you have a dollar bill and can still find one :D , there is something on there that says it is backed by the U.S. Treasury and the full confidence and trust of the U.S. government, so everybody will take it, from the parakeet seller down the road to the guy selling DVDs from a blanket on the sidewalk. Not everybody will take Bitcoin (or any other cryptocurrency), so no, it is not "universal tender".

Money is a social construct, but is my favorite example of why social constructs are pretty darn real. Yes, it is a social construct. Even if you are using a check or a debit card or ApplePay or Zelle, the merchant is taking it because some bank out there says you're good for what you're paying. Oh, and BTW, if you're not, you might be hearing about some overdraft fees, or going to jail - if the transaction goes through. On the other hand, as you rummage through the dumpster looking for food as you live homeless on the street, keep ranting that money isn't real ... and see how far that gets you.

To be fair, conservative goldbugs are increasingly a fringe even within an increasingly Qcumber fringe Rethug party. You can't find many these days. If you can, they will rant about how Ron Paul really won the 2008 election, or the 16th Amendment and Federal Reserve are un-Constitutional, or how every Cabinet department except for Defense should be eliminated. Equally nutty shit like that. BTW, if you want to see them froth at the mouth, it takes three words: "fractional reserve banking". :D

Ron loved to talk about the Austrian School of Economics. (Von Mises, Von Hayek). Basically, it's Friedman's neoliberalism with one deletion: they don't even want the government with any regulation of banking, or control over the monetary supply. No Fed - no Central Bank - oh and BTW Ron felt states should be allowed to print their own currency. :roll: It's neoliberalism with the stupid dialed to 11.
When I visited Ottawa, Canada years ago they had a “Museum of Money” and I got fascinated with the history of money. Gotta LOVE Canada’s money, it’s a lot more interesting than ours. Still have several “Toonies” I brought back.

At times in our history, banks could put out their own currency. At one time, ANY bank could do so, putting things into near-bedlam. They ended the practice of banks having their own currency in the Depression.

Heck, for 30 years or so, Disney printed it’s own legal tender, Disney Dollars. I have one somewhere I kept as a momento. https://www.mouseplanet.com/11421/The_S ... ey_Dollars
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Re: Conservatives and Bitcoin

Post by ProfX »

You can say anything's currency - theoretically.

There was this guy who declared himself Emperor of San Francisco in the 19th century - real historical oddball named Emperor Norton (he's in Robert A. Wilson's books) - and he started handing out currency with his face on it.

Image

You could hand it to somebody and tell them to take it, and they would be like "who the F is Emperor Norton and why is this worth anything"? :D

Disney can hand you Disney Bucks and say they are good everywhere in the Magic Kingdom - and since they say so, they are. Problem is once you go anywhere else, like say a malt shop on International Drive in Orlando, and they will be like, Sorry, I ain't f**king taking something with Mickey Mouse's Picture on it."

The subject of the history of money I agree is a really interesting one, including what various cultures used for currency (check out "Yap money" which they used in the Pacific - it will blow your mind - not exactly easy to transport), and of course the history of banking. One warning - on that latter subject, conspiracy nutters quickly go off the rails, particularly about the role of certain ethnic groups. Nuff said.
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Re: Conservatives and Bitcoin

Post by ZoWie »

If you run out of gas out on the New Mexico plains somewhere, Disney Dollars aren't going to fill up your car.

I have some around somewhere. They re-opened Disneyland a few months back, so they're worth something there, but for a while they were best used for lighting the fireplace. Local currencies are SO 1700s.

Crypto/Bitcoin/NFT is this year's Gold Bug. That ship sailed about two years ago. About when you first heard of Bitcoin is when the price of one bitcoin went from around a buck to more like 30-40 thousand. I can't give you an accurate quote because quotes don't exist. It's whatever some crypto-mine server farm in Kazakhstan using most of that country's electricity says it is at that microsecond. (The server farms used to be mostly in Russia, real trustworthy country that, but they got thrown out and moved across the border to the flat empty land of the Kazakhs. So now they use nearly all of THAT country's electricity, and essentially there's a war on there. What could go wrong?)

Every ten years, someone dreams up a new investment scheme. For about 6 months to a year, people make out like bandits. Then a billion other suckers jump in and get piddle or even a haircut. Eventually it gets so out of hand that it collapses and someone goes to jail for our sins. Rinse, repeat.

NFTs are a big problem here. They caused a lot of soul searching. I could make bad art and sell it as NFTs. I could make about as spectacular an income as I do peddling writing over the Internet, as in don't buy that Ferrari yet. It does not replace working for a living, and the art basically is bubble gum cards, so I decided why bother for another couple hundred bucks a year. Make real art and sell it for a grand a pop.

For everyone else, NFTs are Virtual Disney Dollars. You're buying someone else's bubble gum cards and speculating on the price in as determined by that femtosecond's electrons or magnetic domains flying around the great electronic nowhere. At least you have some pretty pictures to look at, so it might beat Bitcoin and its imitators.

No go here.

One inescapable conclusion exists. There is still no free lunch, though you might make out if you're the first person offering that particular free lunch. Thing is, you're not. Unless you're awfully lucky, someone you never heard of did it already, and what you'll get is a free trip to a small cell downtown, or to the welfare office.
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Re: Conservatives and Bitcoin

Post by ZoWie »

ZoWie wrote: Sat Jan 15, 2022 12:21 pm If you run out of gas out on the New Mexico plains somewhere, Disney Dollars aren't going to fill up your car.

I have some around somewhere. They re-opened Disneyland a few months back, so they're worth something there, but for a while they were best used for lighting the fireplace. Local currencies are SO 1700s.

Crypto/Bitcoin/NFT is this year's Gold Bug. That ship sailed about two years ago. About when you first heard of Bitcoin is when the price of one bitcoin went from around a buck to more like 30-40 thousand. I can't give you an accurate quote because quotes don't exist. It's whatever some crypto-mine server farm in Kazakhstan using most of that country's electricity says it is at that microsecond. (The server farms used to be mostly in Russia, real trustworthy country that, but they got thrown out and moved across the border to the flat empty land of the Kazakhs. So now they use nearly all of THAT country's electricity, and essentially there's a war on there. What could go wrong?)

Every ten years, someone dreams up a new investment scheme. For about 6 months to a year, people make out like bandits. Then a billion other suckers jump in and get piddle or even a haircut. Eventually it gets so out of hand that it collapses and someone goes to jail for our sins. Rinse, repeat.

NFTs are a big problem here. They caused a lot of soul searching. I could make bad art and sell it as NFTs. I could make about as spectacular an income as I do peddling writing over the Internet, as in don't buy that Ferrari yet. It does not replace working for a living, and the art basically is bubble gum cards, so I decided why bother for another couple hundred bucks a year. Make real art and sell it for a grand a pop.

For everyone else, NFTs are Virtual Disney Dollars. You're buying someone else's bubble gum cards and speculating on the price as determined by that femtosecond's electrons or magnetic domains flying around the great electronic nowhere. At least you have some pretty pictures to look at, so it might beat Bitcoin and its imitators.

No go here.

One inescapable conclusion exists. There is still no free lunch, though you might make out if you're the first person offering that particular free lunch. Thing is, you're not. Unless you're awfully lucky, someone you never heard of did it already, and what you'll get is a free trip to a small cell downtown, or to the welfare office.
"We must remember that we cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation." --Liz Cheney, Republican, 7/21/22
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Re: Conservatives and Bitcoin

Post by ZoWie »

If you run out of gas out on the New Mexico plains somewhere, Disney Dollars aren't going to fill up your car.

I have some around somewhere. They re-opened Disneyland a few months back, so they're worth something there, but for a while they were best used for lighting the fireplace. Local currencies are SO 1700s.

Crypto/Bitcoin/NFT is this year's Gold Bug. That ship sailed about two years ago. About when you first heard of Bitcoin is when the price of one bitcoin went from around a buck to more like 30-40 thousand. I can't give you an accurate quote because quotes don't exist. It's whatever some crypto-mine server farm in Kazakhstan using most of that country's electricity says it is at that microsecond. (The server farms used to be mostly in Russia, real trustworthy country that, but they got thrown out and moved across the border to the flat empty land of the Kazakhs. So now they use nearly all of THAT country's electricity, and essentially there's a war on there. What could go wrong?)

Every ten years, someone dreams up a new investment scheme. For about 6 months to a year, people make out like bandits. Then a billion other suckers jump in and get piddle or even a haircut. Eventually it gets so out of hand that it collapses and someone goes to jail for our sins. Rinse, repeat.

NFTs are a big problem here. They caused a lot of soul searching. I could make bad art and sell it as NFTs. I could make about as spectacular an income as I do peddling writing over the Internet, as in don't buy that Ferrari yet. It does not replace working for a living, and the art basically is bubble gum cards, so I decided why bother for another couple hundred bucks a year. Make real art and sell it for a grand a pop.

For everyone else, NFTs are Virtual Disney Dollars. You're buying someone else's bubble gum cards and speculating on the price as determined by that femtosecond's electrons or magnetic domains flying around the great electronic nowhere. At least you have some pretty pictures to look at, so it might beat Bitcoin and its imitators.

No go here.

One inescapable conclusion exists. There is still no free lunch, though you might make out if you're the first person offering that particular free lunch. Thing is, you're not. Unless you're awfully lucky, someone you never heard of did it already, and what you'll get is a free trip to a small cell downtown, or to the welfare office.
"We must remember that we cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation." --Liz Cheney, Republican, 7/21/22
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Re: Conservatives and Bitcoin

Post by Number6 »

Bitcoins, IMO, are a scam in which a small group of people will make money. My problems with Bitcoin is there is nothing back them. A country's currency is backed by the faith of the country and while faith of the country isn't tangible there is value to it. Also, Bitcoin isn't backed by the FDIC so if you lose your Bitcoins because the place you store them went under the FDIC isn't going to step in and cover the losses like the would do with bands and credit unions.

On a side note about banks and credit unions. I was taking some business courses at a local junior college in California in the 80s and one of my instructors was a retired AF Colonel who was also on the board of directors for a local, small bank. He explained how a larger bank acts as an mentor/auditor to ensure the small bank complied with all state and federal regulations. He was saying if we had another series of bank failures, the smaller banks would fail first and the FDIC would pay all if not most of the losses to the account owners. If the bank failures continued longer, the larger banks wouldn't the full percentage for their losses.
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Re: Conservatives and Bitcoin

Post by Motor City »

here is one of Ronald Reagans task force for economic justice members explaining to the congressional black causus in the early 90s about money and the basic scheme that is the foundation of the neoconservatives and that conservative democrats seek to aspire to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m402w_guCxI
Norman Kurland at Congressional Black Caucus 1992

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5h7hVrJLcuI
President Reagan's Remarks on the Task Force on Project Economic Justice on August 3, 1987

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_fo ... al_Justice

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Re: Conservatives and Bitcoin

Post by ZoWie »

Another difference is that people get tricked into thinking Bitcoin is legal tender. Well, it is, for cyber ransoms, they always demand crypto for payment. Ditto presumably for a lot of secret fund transfers involving people the FBI or international counter-terrorism alliances would love to catch up with.

Some country, maybe El Salvador, made Bitcoin their official currency. Their economy promptly collapsed. They didn't learn, and I think they still stand by it.

Elon Musk took it for a while, and caught flak since he was advertising that his cars were good for the environment when crypto mining uses a truly astonishing percentage of all the electricity in the world. So he stopped, but I understand that now he takes some other cryptocurrency. I personally would not trust any fiat currency the "exchange rate" for which is controlled by random walks through chaos math in distributed concealed computer memories accessed by speculators worldwide at microsecond speed 24/7/52.

This shit is taking over. Witness some crypto speculation startup buying the naming rights to LA's NBA basketball arena. People are already calling it The Crypt, which is not inappropriate given the kind of season the Lakers are having.

In general, for me, crypto proves two things.

1. There really is a sucker born every minute (apply appropriate correction for current population expansion rate since PT Barnum's time).

2. Sufficiently advanced technology really is indistinguishable from magic, or in this case maybe from a roulette game that people hope is rigged in their favor.
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Re: Conservatives and Bitcoin

Post by Toonces »

The one thing I've noticed about cryptocurrency is that most of what I see about it is people trying to get you to buy it. This, alone, makes me suspicious. It has a pyramid scheme feel to it.
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Re: Conservatives and Bitcoin

Post by Glennfs »

gounion wrote: Sat Jan 15, 2022 8:28 am Oh, the hypocrisy!

For the last 60 years, I've listened to the conservative bullshit about money. How it's HORRIBLE that FDR took us off the gold standard, where paper money could be traded for gold at any time, and the worth of that paper money was tied to gold.

Of course, as our population growns and our economy grows, there isn't enough gold in the world to do such a thing. But logic was never their strong point.

So for all these years they've screamed about the gold standard, and how our monetary system was all fake, and we needed REAL money.

But now, suddenly, they've went nuts over bitcoin and all these other crypto currencies. So I guess they've suddenly decided they want pretend money.

Of course, the reason is they think they'll get rich. But it shows they never REALLY believed the bullshit they were peddling about the gold standard. It was just a way to attack liberals.
What makes you believe it is conservatives going nuts for bitcoin as opposed to it being either bipartisan or progressives
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Re: Conservatives and Bitcoin

Post by Glennfs »

Number6 wrote: Sat Jan 15, 2022 3:04 pm Bitcoins, IMO, are a scam in which a small group of people will make money. My problems with Bitcoin is there is nothing back them. A country's currency is backed by the faith of the country and while faith of the country isn't tangible there is value to it. Also, Bitcoin isn't backed by the FDIC so if you lose your Bitcoins because the place you store them went under the FDIC isn't going to step in and cover the losses like the would do with bands and credit unions.

On a side note about banks and credit unions. I was taking some business courses at a local junior college in California in the 80s and one of my instructors was a retired AF Colonel who was also on the board of directors for a local, small bank. He explained how a larger bank acts as an mentor/auditor to ensure the small bank complied with all state and federal regulations. He was saying if we had another series of bank failures, the smaller banks would fail first and the FDIC would pay all if not most of the losses to the account owners. If the bank failures continued longer, the larger banks wouldn't the full percentage for their losses.
We agree 100pct. At some point bitcoin is going to tank and those who lose their asses are going to call for congressional investigations.
Personally I thought it was illegal to start a currency guess I was wrong
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Re: Conservatives and Bitcoin

Post by gounion »

Glennfs wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 4:44 pm What makes you believe it is conservatives going nuts for bitcoin as opposed to it being either bipartisan or progressives
Oh, I dunno...
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Re: Conservatives and Bitcoin

Post by Libertas »

gounion wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 5:00 pm Oh, I dunno...
Will con read it and then what will con say.

Who cares.
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Re: Conservatives and Bitcoin

Post by gounion »

Glennfs wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 4:44 pm What makes you believe it is conservatives going nuts for bitcoin as opposed to it being either bipartisan or progressives
Ask Ted Cruz.
United States Senator Ted Cruz of Texas submitted a resolution on the Senate floor Monday that would require the acceptance of cryptocurrency payments at all gift shops, restaurants and vending machines located within the Capitol Complex. The resolution, titled Adopting Cryptocurrency in Congress as an Exchange of Payment for Transactions, or ACCEPT, also prohibits the Architect of the Capitol — a presidential appointee who oversees the administration of the Capitol Complex — from entering into contracts that preclude the use of cryptocurrency as a form of payment provided that they “are cost-effective and value-centered for patrons.”

Cruz said in an interview with Breitbart news “As consumers better understand and embrace cryptocurrency, merchants are increasingly accepting crypto as a payment method. Congress is typically slow to adopt new technology. My bill would position Congress to lead on this issue.”

In October, Cruz made headlines for saying that wasted natural gas could be used to mine bitcoin and shore up the Texas electrical grid at the Texas Blockchain summit. This September, Cruz opposed Biden nominee Saule Omarova for Comptroller of the Currency partially on the grounds that she would over-regulate crypto. This past August, Cruz introduced an amendment to an infrastructure bill that would have nixed a provision requiring the reporting of crypto transactions over $10,000.
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Re: Conservatives and Bitcoin

Post by ProfX »

So again, the point I would make about crypto is it was created for a reason - cryptocurrency transactions are basically the way to transact on the Internet while keeping the transaction and buyer and seller hidden. Same reason why if you want to buy a lot of fertilizer to make a bomb in a physical store you might want to pay cash.

So, the question to ask Ted is, is he in favor of keeping crypto transactions unregulated and unmonitored because: it will make it easier to avoid taxes (because it will), or, is he in favor of members of ISIS being able to buy bombs with cryptocurrency so the transactions can go undetected ... ?

The second might be an interesting question to ask him, but I would. :)
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Re: Conservatives and Bitcoin

Post by rainwater »

..."crypto" as money removes the need for paper, the paper used around the planet for "money" made from whats
missing now...trees.

each time "they" try to invent some new star treky type way to go its a failure. humans are, will be, forced
to use a computer as a "bank" which is grossly dangerous all becuz the earth ran out of...paper.

each time you see a cardboard box in the dumpster realize the absolute total waste of resource.
unrecoverable resource wasted after delivering to you.. one meal.

none of this is sustainable. all pol/celebs know this and are totally unable to make a difference.
any ads on tv about not wasting cardboard?...no. recycle your boxes?...no.
china use to take our recycled cardboards and papers...they dont any longer.
one, it was Too Much Stuff... two, some trade shit the sadist caused.

im not sure at all what happens to the tree products that Are recycled. we used to make things from it...
now between the plastics in the waters both salt and fresh and the loss of tree vegetation and the loss of water
due to evaporation and fires..we're pretty fucked.
but hey buy more fake money. it goes with todays wurld of fake and phony.
Who are these..flag-sucking halfwits fleeced fooled by stupid little rich kids They speak for all that is cruel stupid They are racists hate mongers I piss down the throats of these Nazis Im too old to worry whether they like it. Fuck them.
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ProfX
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Re: Conservatives and Bitcoin

Post by ProfX »

Glennfs wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 4:46 pm We agree 100pct. At some point bitcoin is going to tank and those who lose their asses are going to call for congressional investigations.
Personally I thought it was illegal to start a currency guess I was wrong
It is not illegal. You can open up an arcade - OK, yes, I can remember when those existed too - and say it only takes tokens with a picture of Howard the Duck on them. Absolutely legal.

What is not legal is taking something inauthentic and passing it off as the legal tender of the U.S. Treasury which is to be universally accepted: we call that counterfeiting. You can go to jail for that.

Bitcoin is actually one of several cryptocurrencies. NFTs, which Zowie mentioned in this thread, are "based on" another type of crypto called Ethereum. So several exist. And yes, believe it or not, this all electronic money does damage the environment because it has to be "mined" - it's a euphemism, but the reality is server farms generate this stuff (you can read up on the process it involves "blockchain") and it uses a lot of electricity which if it is being powered by fossil fuels ....

Nobody's going to jail for it. That said, it is also, unlike a dollar bill, not universally accepted legal tender. It is strange BTW that another notable conservative, Peter Thiel, built his career on building a similar type of e-payment system called PayPal. Different technology, but same idea. PayPal was also this kind of e-cash to be used on the Internet to enable you to transact anonymously. Because the problem with paying by credit or debit on the Internet is of course a record exists of the transaction and the buyer and seller. In the real world, this is why people may pay cash at the local Hustler Store. In the digital world, it is why they might be using crypto to buy kiddie porn.

Which again begs the question that started this thread ... why are conservatives such big backers of crypto?

Ted Cruz, in all seriousness, why do you want Congress to facilitate terrorists buying more bombs or kiddie porn?

Congress can't make it illegal. It is not a scam per se. But here's the question: why were Ted and so many other Rethuglicans so hostile to Omarova's idea that large transactions should still be monitored and regulated?

People seriously don't learn. There was a huge e-market for something called derivatives (*), largely electronically traded, and of course conservatives fought having that market regulated also. P.S. read up -- that electronic casino helped cause the financial crash of 2008.

(*) Cliff notes version: my brother understands this crap better than me, but essentially you are trading in the momentum of a transaction rather than in a commodity. Did it make sense? Did it make a few people rich until it basically helped crash the global economy? And most importantly: why did conservatives fight tighter regulations on it?
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gounion
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Re: Conservatives and Bitcoin

Post by gounion »

ProfX wrote: Mon Jan 17, 2022 7:33 am (*) Cliff notes version: my brother understands this crap better than me, but essentially you are trading in the momentum of a transaction rather than in a commodity. Did it make sense? Did it make a few people rich until it basically helped crash the global economy? And most importantly: why did conservatives fight tighter regulations on it?
IMHO, it's gambling, nothing more, nothing less. And it's better for most people to take their money to Vegas - gambling there is honest, at least. The only ones that get rich through derivatives in the market are the big-money folks manipulating it. It's a scam.
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ZoWie
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Re: Conservatives and Bitcoin

Post by ZoWie »

ProfX wrote: Mon Jan 17, 2022 7:33 am (*) Cliff notes version: my brother understands this crap better than me, but essentially you are trading in the momentum of a transaction rather than in a commodity. Did it make sense? Did it make a few people rich until it basically helped crash the global economy? And most importantly: why did conservatives fight tighter regulations on it?
Bingo.

That's exactly what you are doing.

Derivatives are another version of trading on the transactions themselves, as are electric power markets, since you can't store enough energy to make a true commodity out of it. It's generated 24/7/52, so a few corporate types in Texas made a business out of trading it as a commodity. The result just cost me a lot of money for a home backup generator, which btw worked great in the last power failure. I understand there's a 6-month wait to get one installed in Texas. Wouldn't it have been simpler just not to trade electricity futures, and also to spend the money to maintain the distribution system rather than stock buybacks and inflated dividends? (Don't start me on this.......)

Then there's high-frequency trading. You have a good portion of the electricity that isn't being used to crypto-mine being used to be the first guy to make a trade on something. Doesn't matter what. You're trading on the velocity of the trade, not the item being traded. In HFT it makes all the difference to be first, so we are building vast server farms worldwide. We have found that fiber optics and space-based communications are too slow, so the latest thing is building radio links on plain old ordinary short wave bands using megawatts into giant antennas to beat the latency of fiber by a few microseconds. Really. This is what they spend our money on.

I don't have words.
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Glennfs
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Re: Conservatives and Bitcoin

Post by Glennfs »

gounion wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 5:00 pm Oh, I dunno...
https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2018/0 ... s-anymore/

Check out the first chart in the link. Bitcoin is pretty much nonpartisan.
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gounion
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Re: Conservatives and Bitcoin

Post by gounion »

Glennfs wrote: Mon Jan 17, 2022 2:34 pm https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2018/0 ... s-anymore/

Check out the first chart in the link. Bitcoin is pretty much nonpartisan.
Oh, yes, Bannon and Cruz are nothing if not bi-partisan. :lol: :lol: :lol:
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