Jack,
You are not wrong.
The old RSA Random Number Generator was Corrupted by the NSA/CIA so the range of numbers it produced were reduced in such a way, that they could hack it.

Yes. It's not perfect. The one aspect I don't like is that we rely on the internet. And I would prefer a system that was not counterfeitable, like paper is.

But your model has to have some level of assumptions. My basic one is that IF there is no internet and no power... It's a DIFFERENT GAME.

If life continues forward WITH those things. This will be an obvious solution to GOVT controlling our currencies/wallets. Which MUST END.

Banking... And Income Taxes came 1 yr apart, and were designed to enslave us, and they have.

I want a potential exit.

I am open to workable alternatives.
Do you have any?

But it is just another fiat currency like the paper dollar. All you “own” is some digital numbers. Doesn’t sound like a store of wealth to me. It’s backed by nothing, just like the U.S. dollar and could evaporate overnight. If I wanted my bitcoins even, where are they? I must be missing why people think this is a good idea. Certainly the U.S. dollar is a terrible store if wealth. It’s only a medium of short term exchange

CaptainKirk,

I must disagree with you on these points below:

Bitcoin is fiat, just like the dollar, neither is money, they are currency. The dollar has value, the paper is really nice… But the value of the paper is not proportional to the face value of the note. The same with bitcoin, the value used to discover the unique number has nothing to do with the face value assigned to it.

I do agree that the limiting number of coins is a great value for Bitcoin, my issues and not with this aspect of it.

My biggest objection to holding bitcoin is that it’s based-on technology. It’s a virtualized fiat currency, if the power goes out, you have nothing. I’m a cloud automation engineer for a (less than) respectable internet company. The cloud is just someone else’s hardware, it’s nothing special. I’ve seen how projects are run, how people take shortcuts and put other people’s business into jeopardy. These guys are releasing code without testing let alone testing is nearly impossible due to the complexities of the environments. The value of the bitcoin you hold is tied to this development cycle with you have no control over.

“Bitcoin isn’t controlled by the government” – hogwash… Bitcoin is reliant upon systems controlled by foreign entities. The reliance on the internet is the single biggest reason why I don’t invest in bitcoin. Technology is easy to implement and it’s even easier to break but even better, is to corrupt. You are trusting that the developers have not provided a backdoor into the blockchain for the government. It’s possible and you can never be sure, humans are corruptible.

Jack

Naïve statements.

Determine the encryption used or the transit protocol, and can be filtered anywhere along the route to your location and IT'S GONE. Any relay point apart from your computer modem/firewall/router is OUTSIDE your ability to influence.

crypto like hosting your data/servers online REQUIRES trust AND SHARES your data with strangers. Great thing to do with "wealth". More, whatever is the host location (its hardware and its connectivity) has the ability to prohibit access or filter content how it sees fit.

This isn't hard. And, from a technical standpoint pretty simple to do.

That doesn't make it a ponzi scheme. Your dollars were exchanged for bitcoin from an (anonymous) seller who had previously purchased or mined the bitcoin. The mechanics of the trade are not fundamentally different from exchanging your dollars for gold.

"If everyone wanted to get rid of their bitcoin" is not a realistic scenario. Bitcoin has been around for more than a decade, it has no secret features, and its advantages and disadvantages are well known. Like gold, bitcoin functions as money because a sufficient number of people like its features and are willing to use it as a medium of exchange.

Bitcoin isn’t a Ponzi scheme at all. It’s just another form of fiat. Yes it has a theoretical ceiling. But there’s no floor. Beyond how many decimals one is comfortable going out.
In a different world where everything wasn’t already screwed up I’d say BTC was a great idea. After the collapse BTC may be the way to go. Honestly it’s easier to “mine” than gold. But until the creature from Jekyll Island breathes it’s last putrid breath it remains a danger to all forms of wealth storage. Including BTC.

I put dollars in somewhere and received the digital code for the bitcoin from somewhere. But where did the dollars go, and if I want to trade in the bitcoin, from where do the dollars come from . what if everyone wanted to get rid of their bitcoin, what happens then>

It's not a ponzi scheme.

A ponzi scheme is controlled by its originator. Bitcoin is decentralized.

A ponzi scheme pays early investors with the money collected from later ones. Bitcoin can be traded for cash back and forth by anyone.

A ponzi scheme generally involves deception. Bitcoin does not.

A ponzi scheme relies on a continuing influx of new money for those who want to cash out. Bitcoin does not.

Oh, but AFTER they paid us for TAKING our gold.
They let gold double in price. Hmmm... Strange...

You mean the price of Gold can be manipulated?
Silver?
The LIBOR?

All of it. And it is.
To the benefit of the bankers!

Jack,
First, it's not fiat. It must be mined. The mining uses CPU/Electricity. The halving causes the cost of mining to basically double. It's a competitive designed system to encourage a lot of people to run miners. The more miners, the more security you have.

And it does NOT have the value of some buyer, of any buyer. It has the value where Buyers/Sellers meet.
Just like stocks, bonds, and many things we deal with notationally.

If nobody wants yours for a price you are willing to take. Don't sell it.

But the MAGIC of BTC is that Nobody controls it. And the TOTAL NUMBER is established, and CANNOT be changed.
So... No Watering down the currency. It's provably secure. (in fact, it's security is one of it's drawbacks).

Criticize it for the Transaction Fees. But don't call it FIAT.

And using the logic: "It could be outlawed"... Well, in a society like ours... So can Free Speech, and YOUR access to BANK accounts. If BTC were embraced... NOBODY could prevent you from buying/selling yours for whatever you wanted.
THAT'S the goal. No bankers or government in the middle of every transactions.

Yes, it's new. Try explaining the Federal Reserve system to someone 100 years ago. M1, M2, M3, etc.

They literally cannot be duplicated. The cannot be watered down.
I dare you to find a better starting place for a modern currency.
(Oh, and unlike the dollar, it's more than currency, it's actual money... Especially once fully adopted)

The only problem I have with bitcoin is that it IS a fiat currency in itself. Its NOT store of value by any means. I always wondered where the US dollars I might have put into it exchange for the digital representations actually went? Who got them. I am pretty sure that if all the people who wanted to trade in their bitcoin for US dollars might find out its a giant ponzi scheme

Right, it pulls the rug out from under the Fed!

I'll root for Bitcoin to succeed against all odds. Better than the banking cabal trying to control everything.

Read the post I was responding to, then read mine.

If gold becomes cheaper to mine, through advancing technology or otherwise, more gold will be mined and put on the market, causing the price of gold to decrease and the price of goods and services denominated in gold to rise. Evidence: California gold rush 1848. https://www.metaldetector.com/blogs/n...

"The large quantities of gold being discovered caused the pieces being mined to drop significantly in value. An ounce of gold went from $16 all the way down to $12 an ounce within months and stayed there, at least until some supplies started coming back East, and they were able to regulate prices accordingly."

Also: https://www.parks.ca.gov/pages/22922/...

" The gold pans that miners needed cost 20 cents before 1849, but soon were sold for $8 each. The cost of eggs rose from $1.00, to $2.00, to $3.00 per egg."

It’s not a coincidence that USDT and BTC rose together. Since Tether was “tethered” to the dollar one to one it took a lot of money to finance that rise. There are very few organizations that had that much “quiet” access to that many dollars. I’m not leading people down the rabbit hole. I’m merely pointing out that it exists and where it is. I see the tracks. Look at the valuations and trading volumes of both cryptos round about 2017. Or don’t. It matters not. Nothing will stop what’s coming. Kind of like the election. I’m just saying that anything you can’t lay your hands on in 15 minutes, or less, isn’t really yours. Another way of saying it “the less paper between you and the gold the better”

Huh ?

All good arguments but I’m still a skeptic:

When gold was outlawed, gold’s value wasn’t destroyed; this is my major point, it has value in itself. I know you can’t eat gold but if I need something large, I bet I’m able to find someone willing to trade with gold and silver still.

Agreed, the dollar and bitcoin are both fiat currencies…

Internet going down - I’m holding precious metals in my possession for this reason. You might not have been paying attention (not being argumentative, just making a point, sorry) but the economy and our way of life has been set up for a major fall, deliberately.

1) The economy has been weakened massively with the intentional printing of dollars.
2) Fentanyl is flowing into our country to weaken us within.
3) Our new generation of fighting young “men” are not.
4) Covid was a cover to introduce a vaccine, in my opinion, to cull the herd.
5) We have two conflicts that have dwindled our armories and could quite possibly trigger WWIII.
6) We have a president with oatmeal for brains.
7) All diesel engines must use DPF to function, easy trigger to stop commerce. There was a DPF scare about a year ago, would have stopped everything in its tracks.
8) One of Barack Obama first actions as president was to transfer control of DNS outside of the US. Control of the internet…

It’s a trap, bitcoin will be blocked from trading. I’m starting a business helping companies become self-sufficient in the cyber world. Everything is being set up for total control, including digital cash or CBDC. I would agree that bitcoin would be a good alternative, but I guarantee they will not allow you to trade Bitcoin once this all starts.

"Why not a free market in which participants can decide which money is “real”?"
That, I can agree with as a great idea.

Unfortunately, unless there is an armed uprising, corrupt looters in government
and their collaborators have and will use the power to end use (by anyone
politically lower than themselves) of any 'money' that they can't control.
Bitcoin should be a legal form of money for anyone who wants to use it.
But its current use interferes with the power of the state to control the serfs.
The state will change its use or curtail it using their power over access to it.

What if the government said no, bitcoin is now not legal currency, so sorry?

Already happened with gold, could happen again. Didn’t destroy gold’s value. Bitcoin had/has value (people are willing to pay for it at prices set by the market) even without being legal currency.

Bitcoin is not backed by anything of wealth so it can go to zero in a heartbeat, correct?

The dollar is not backed by anything of wealth so it can go to zero in a heartbeat, correct? No, it has value as long as people are willing to use it as a form of money. Same with bitcoin, except that the maximum number of bitcoin is built into its software, while the maximum number of dollars is infinite.

And lastly, what happens to my money when the internet goes down for good?

I don’t see that happening. If it does, it will be caused by an event so catastrophic that the world will not be worth living in, even if you have a money bin full of gold and an effective means of safeguarding it.

Why not real money, like precious metals?

Why not a free market in which participants can decide which money is “real”?

counter argument:
gold is just about worthless
you cannot eat it
when the world falls apart is is just another metal

ok to invest if you have money that is just sitting there
but be prepared to lose it as that is always a possibility in investing
for example if advancing technologies make it easier and cheaper to mine

Please make me understand this as I can’t comprehend this, replacing one fiat currency with a digital version of another non-government backed fiat currency will somehow protects my wealth? What if the government said no, bitcoin is now not legal currency, so sorry? Bitcoin is not backed by anything of wealth so it can go to zero in a heartbeat, correct? It’s simply a product, only worth what a buyer is willing to pay for it. I also don’t get the hype about it being anonymous as all previous transactions are recorded in the fractional token itself. And lastly, what happens to my money when the internet goes down for good? Bitcoin needs infrastructure to transfer the coins, correct?
Why not real money, like precious metals?

bitcoin is just about worthless
you cannot eat it
when the world falls apart is is just another piece of paper

ok to invest if you have money that is just sitting there
but be prepared to loose it as that is always a possibility in investing