Quote from: JayJuanGee on Today at 06:16:00 PM

Quote from: Snowshow on Today at 09:00:47 AM

Quote from: JayJuanGee on Today at 06:11:09 AM

[edited out]

So, an anonymous guy imagined a number - 21 million,

As I already mentioned the number is mostly irrelevant because the units are divisible.. and so surely the number 21 million ends up working from 50 coins mined every 10 minutes and then a difficulty adjustment every 2016 blocks (about every two weeks) and a halvening every 210k blocks (which would thereby take about 4 years).. so by the time the first halvening takes place - half of the bitcoins are already mined which adds up to 10.5million coins.. and by the time we get a halvening every 4 years and we add up all of the halvenings by the time we get down to the smallest unit, we have 21 million coins by that time.

Surely other numbers could have worked out too.. but it really did not matter too much.. but once it was set, then it was set.. and the only real way to perhaps increase the supply would be to increase the number of digits.. which is not really increasing the supply but instead making the existing units more divisible.

It seems that I also already addressed the anonymity matter too, which seems to be a good thing in terms of establishing decentralization.. and getting the ball rolling in a pretty fair way.

Such guy has no control over bitcoin anymore ---at least not that we know of because we do not know if he might still be involved in bitcoin because like you said, he's anonymous.. amazing right? hahahahaha.. no one to attack and blame, except in the abstract like you are doing Snowshow.. to try to make the whole thing seem more scary than it is.. which is far from convincing... no matter how much you scream it out and/or repeat it..

Quote from: Snowshow on Today at 09:00:47 AM

and then he wrote a protocol and set up a system to attribute the units of that number to online addresses. Then people invested an enormous amount of electricity and other economic resources in that system.

Ok... sure.. fair enough, even though the amount of electricity or the amount of resources put into bitcoin is not really enormous based on the value provided... and also the decisions about whether to buy electricity and invest resources are at the individual level (referring to miners and node operators)

Quote from: Snowshow on Today at 09:00:47 AM

Then I said: "this is a scam". Because there's nothing in the system from which these people could benefit.

Individuals make their own calculations about whether they believe that they can benefit or not by participating in bitcoin at whatever level they want to.. whether they want to mine, run a node, develop, accumulate bitcoin, trade bitcoin, build other resources around bitcoin, spend bitcoin or develop retail services to accept bitcoin, develop financial instruments around bitcoin, or even government recognition and adoption. No one is forcing anyone to get involved in bitcoin, but bitcoin has built in incentives to inspire people to choose to invest time and resources into bitcoin. Surely, some people have already profited from bitcoin and some people have lost money too... but what else is new.. some people are better at investing their time and resources than others.

Sure, there could end up being a rug pull at any time in bitcoin, but the momentum (and various network effects) seems to be continuing to build on an ongoing basis... You can bet against bitcoin and say nothing is there, but the empirical facts (and even logic) seem to be going against you and your claims Snowshow ..

Quote from: Snowshow on Today at 09:00:47 AM

And I even gave you a simple empirical test to prove that: show me how can the holders of Bitcoin benefit without someone entering the system? If there's something in the system and this is valuable, then obviously people are able to benefit from that.

Your test seems to be pie in the sky made up bullshit.. with made up parameters.

Do you know what that is called? A strawman argument.

Bitcoin already shows itself to be valuable in all kinds of ways, there is no need to jump through your made up hoops in order to concede that value could only come through your way of measuring value.

In other words, the longer that bitcoin is around, the more and more it interacts with other systems and embeds into other systems - and value comes from that too... even if at some point, bitcoin ends up completely going to zero and showing itself as some kind of a vacuous system that never ever ended up having any value (as you continue to proclaim).

Quote from: Snowshow on Today at 09:00:47 AM

They are able to benefit from within the system. It's pretty simple. And you know what results this test produces. You know that without someone entering the system, the holders are left with nothing. Which is an indispensable proof that I am right.

You can be right all that you want, and you will have fun staying poor the whole time, too.

Cheesy

By the way, you can choose to get into bitcoin now, or you can choose to get into bitcoin later.

For sure, many of us longer term bitcoiners recommend that nocoiners get the fuck off of zero.. so in that regard, if you are a BIG ASS bitcoin skeptic, then maybe you would just invest 1% of your investment portfolio into it.. Sure, that might not be a lot of value, but at least you end up having some stake in the game.

Historically, I had recommended that new entrants into bitcoin start out with somewhere between 1% and 10% of their investment portfolio into bitcoin, and then of course, they can tailorize their investment level once they learn more about bitcoin. In the past year and a half or more. I have been gravitating towards suggesting that the starting out investment range could safely be in the 1% to 25% level because bitcoin's investment thesis seems to have had gotten stronger .. especially after some of the events around March 2020 and even some of the various monetary reactions to both the March 2020 liquidity issues and various matters related to the pandemic and also some of the new stuff around wide-spread freezing accounts... whether at the individual/institutional level such as the Canadian trucker situation.. but also around the recent freezing of Russian accounts (government level, associated banks and even targeting of institutions and individuals too).

Quote from: Snowshow on Today at 09:00:47 AM

There's nothing in the system. No value, no resources, nothing.

You seem to be blind.

Quote from: Snowshow on Today at 09:00:47 AM

The system is just a means for tricking people out of their value.

I am still waiting for when this supposed rug pull is going to come. I have ONLY been in bitcoin for about 8.5 years, so I will admit that my first few years had some of my value in the negative.. but I largely continued to invest during my first few years to continue to accumulate bitcoin, so surely some profits have already been taken out - and there are people with all kinds of variations in their having had already profited by being involved in bitcoin.

It seems that the longer that you have been in, the more likely that the value invested has decent chances of compounding.. even though for sure there are no guarantees, and surely, as already mentioned, there are all kinds of ways that people can choose to invest their time and value into bitcoin.... or choose to refrain which you proclaim your lil selfie to be doing and to recommend for others.. which hopefully there are not too many people dumb enough to follow your likely to be ongoing loser recommendation in this regard.

I guess part of the point that I was intending to make earlier is that you can come into bitcoin at any time, and still likely be able to profit from getting involved in bitcoin, and sure it is quite likely that some of the monetary gains (on a percentage basis) are likely to NOT have as large of an exponential curve in the future, but the fact that bitcoin remains quite early in its development and adoption phases, there still seems to remain quite a bit of upside potential in terms of steepness of the price performance curve.. so surely, it remains your choice about whether to get in or when to get in or how much to get in, and there surely seems to be some value in getting started getting in sooner rather than waiting or spending a lot of time complaining about how bitcoin supposedly has no value.. that kind of seemingly chosen blindness (to the extent that anyone could actually believe that kind of nonsense rather than just be making it up because they are so scared) is not helping you or anyone else for that matter.

In other words, you seem to be fighting a kind of inevitable uppity of bitcoin, even if there is likely to continue to be ups and downs on the ongoing likely UPpity bitcoin path in terms of various adoption (network effect) and including the reflection of ongoing UPpity movement in BTC prices.. even if it might take a while to play out.

Quote from: Snowshow on Today at 09:00:47 AM

But you still think I am wrong.

Yep.

Quote from: Snowshow on Today at 09:00:47 AM

You still think there's value in the system.

Both logic and facts seem to support ongoing existing value and also ongoing increasing value too.

Quote from: Snowshow on Today at 09:00:47 AM

A half a trillion dollars worth of value.

Well if value equals price, then sure...

Part of the reason that bitcoin remains ongoingly volatile, and perhaps one of its most inevitable features happens to be volatility is because there continue to be disagreements about whether BTC's price reflects value.. and so differences of opinion (in the market) result in some of the price battles and even the striving to push the BTC price down or up, depending upon how you might be playing.. if you are a big enough player who believes s/he can move the markets.

Sure, retail momentum can also play into BTC's price direction too. Of course, there are some folks who buy and sell bitcoin blindly without consulting the price, and there are others who might try to time the short or medium movements in the BTC price. Quite a bit of behavior goes into establishing the price and maybe causing the BTC price to go in one direction or another. If you believe that BTC is overvalued at half a trillion or whatever it is, then you either won't buy it or you might sell what you have or you might even bet against it.

You may or may not be correct, but hopefully, when you are trying to figure out whether to take a stake in bitcoin, you are trying to account for a variety of your own personal factors, and view about the direction of the BTC price as compared with other assets remains only one of the factors. Other factors include your own cashflow, other investments, timeline, risk tolerance, time, skills and abilities to study, learn, plan, strategize and tweak from time to time which may also include reallocations, trading or the use of leverage or financial instruments.

Quote from: Snowshow on Today at 09:00:47 AM

Even if you see, with your own eyes, that not a single human being who enters the system cannot benefit from within the system. That they can't even eat an apple if someone from the outside doesn't bring it into the system. How crazy is that?

It's crazy because it does not matter. People exchange value within bitcoins system and also people exchange value with bitcoin to interact with outside systems. You are making up shit regarding what ifs that do not even play out within the real dynamics that are determining bitcoin's ongoing value and ongoing increasing value with the ongoing building of network effects including tick tock the next block every 10 minutes.. which is fucking valuable, if you think about the fact that no one can stop bitcoin, even if they were to want to .. which in the end, they do not want to invest as many resources into stopping bitcoin as to just let it continue to produce blocks every 10 minutes. Bitcoin is here and continuing to build.. so you can jump on the train or stay on the sidelines and continue to poo-poo bitcoin as if it does not exist. That's your choice.. bitcoin is for friends and for enemies, and none of us can stop you from involving yourself with bitcoin (beyond just talking negative about it) in whatever way that you would like.. or just refrain, if that's what you choose to do.

Quote from: Snowshow on Today at 12:19:52 PM

Quote from: Fivestar4everMVP on Today at 12:08:29 PM

Quote from: Snowshow on Today at 09:08:41 AM

Quote from: Fivestar4everMVP on Today at 06:12:57 AM

~snip~

How all these questions change the fact that I am talking about? Why are you asking irrelevant questions?

Those questions are genuine questions mate, they are not irrelevant, and I was really hoping you did be a man enough to answer them, but No, I know you won't, because the shell of ignorance that you have allowed to wrap itself around you like one who is in a dark room won't allow you see the light around you and come to terms with reality, you probably would continue to wallow in your own ignorance and self deception thinking you are doing yourself and your generation good, not knowing this is your biggest mistake... Though this is not my prayer for you, my prayer for you is that the shells that have blocked covered your sense of what's happening around you should fall off, so that you will come to the realization that the world's monetary system is fast changing and bitcoin is leading that change, and the sooner you realize this, the better for you and those around you.

The questions are completely irrelevant. There will still be nothing in the bitcoin system regardless of what I answer. And I am simply saying that nothing exists in the bitcoin system, no value, no resources, no asset, nothing digital, nothing tangible. Simply nothing. And I am right. That's why someone has to bring something from the outside of the system to save the holders from the scam they put themselves in.

Perhaps there is a way to just play along with you for a while Snowshow.

For argument sake, we could concede that intrinsically bitcoin has nothing of value contained there in.. it is starting from.. nothing, nada, nichts, la shayy, nichego, Méiyǒu, kuchh nahin, rien, nashi, hiç bir şey, không có gì.

So even if bitcoin starts from nothing, people start to put resources into bitcoin such as mining it (electricity as you had conceded) but also manpower and production of dedicated computers, they put time and energy into developing it, they build various kinds of systems around it as ways to trade it and to speculate on its price and to store it.

I would speculate that the various ways to put value into bitcoin whether time or money or resources, ends up creating value, no? Some of that value could be fleeting but some of that value could be sticky, too, and if there might end up being utility in using such bitcoin systems (such as keeping track of transactions in a way that is superior to prior methods because there are higher levels of objectivity in the ledger), then the present value may well increase and increase and there may well be speculation regarding future value based in part of present value, current developments and speculations regarding future developments, building and utility.

It seems that some kind of a system that has no intrinsic value would be able to develop present and future value based on various kinds of ongoing inputs into the system and also ways in which such systems that are bitcoin or built on or around bitcoin will become increasingly known, including that some folks may well start to speculate that such bitcoin system has superior ways of holding or building value as compared with other systems that they know, which may well cause some momentum that contributes to the value of a previously intrinsically zero product/project to be growing in value.

So, how can you benefit from your precious bitcoins if no one new enters into the system?