Quote from: coltsrule7 on July 30, 2017, 02:23:41 AM

Quote from: r0ach on July 30, 2017, 01:46:15 AM

Quote from: traincarswreck on July 30, 2017, 12:41:26 AM

Quote from: lethos3 on July 30, 2017, 12:10:15 AM

and a coin with 1mb blocks forever has economic viability?

Yes it does. It would help us secure bitcoin's greatest use case

This is false. Bitcoin has zero value as a settlement layer because far better alternatives for settlement existed before it's creation (noble metals). For bitcoin to have value as a settlement layer it would need to be able to compete as the base of Exter's pyramid, but it can't for numerous reasons I've stated before:

1) Bitcoin has built in middlemen (transaction validators) and counter party risk, negative traits that are typically found among "currencies" and never found among "money". The entire purpose of the base of Exter's pyramid is to remove counter party risk so that even if everyone else on the planet dies, you are not left holding a worthless coupon. This is why something is required to be an actual commodity, not a fake psuedo commodity (bitcoin) to be real money. Bitcoin will always be just a currency alone and not money, and currencies derive value from transaction flow (scalability) not stock.

2) Money is an abstract concept that represents goods or the ability to do work (services). This means the ideal form of money would be energy based since it represents both a commodity and service at the same time. The problem there is that humans don't have the technology to do so and remove counter party risk, and the free market time after time has signaled removing counter party risk is even more important, so it utilized metals. The fact that anything you do in bitcoin is going to make you a 1 of N participant means there is no removing counter party risk in bitcoin and it's dead on arrival for competing as a settlement system, aka money, aka the base of Exter's pyramid.

3) All forms of money and currency have elements of a pyramid or ponzi scheme to them, meaning it's all about me finding some resource and hoarding a bunch of it to try and create a master/slave relationship where I now rule over you because I got what you need. Such a paradigm doesn't actually work with a "virtual" commodity. If Elwar or Jimbo corners the entire 21 millioin coin market, it really doesn't mean shit to me. Under no circumstance do I need their coins when they have no intrinsic real world use, so I can completely ignore them and thus no master/slave relationship is formed. This is also a good reason why gold may lose a lot of it's market cap to silver in the long run due to gold having far less use.

Well one could argue that bitcoins value is derived from the work (labor) needed to bring each new bitcoin to market.

That's just the textbook definition of sunk cost fallacy. If anything you are just proving my point. We spend a bunch of time, resources, and energy to create a virtual commodity (bitcoin) that has no real value, especially if bitcoin died. If you spent all that same time, effort, and resources to dig up silver instead, worst case scenario you could convert them to 29% efficiency solar panels in the end. It's crazy to waste time and resources on a black hole called mining for an imaginary resource when you can mine for a real resource instead.

Claiming that you NEED bitcoin to send money to China is also another fallacy because as I've stated a million times, bitcoin is only a currency and not money or the base of Exter's pyramid. Just like the Chinese wouldn't want an infinite stream of digital US T-bills, they would also not want a continuous stream of bitcoins. They are going to want some type of REAL WORLD good or service for their trade so you will be shipping them something in a large ship anyway. You do not eliminate the movement of real world goods by using bitcoin.