Authoritarianism in practice. There's no reason why socialism would need to have such insane monetary policies.
Readit Newsplaceybordeaux commented on Venezuelan Hyperinflation Explodes, Soaring Over 440,000 Percent bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/sidko
What prevents someone from changing that 30 minutes into 0 minutes? Iow, what do they gain by not doing this?
They only lose the caching effect.
placeybordeaux commented on The Rate of Return on Everything, 1870–2015 [pdf] frbsf.org/economic-resear... · Posted by u/Sandman
placeybordeaux commented on Bitcoin: Update network descriptions to be more accurate github.com/bitcoin-dot-or... · Posted by u/SnowProblem
If the crypto doesn't have a central bank to institute monetary policy and manage supply, it's unsolvable.
I feel like a broken record saying this: Demand for the currency will fluctuate. If the supply is fixed, the price will be demand-driven. Which means volatile. Fiat currency has a central bank with active control over the supply, so it is capable of keeping a stable price if the central bank does its job.
http://www.bzarg.com/p/what-bitcoin-shows-us-about-how-money...
There is nothing to say that all coins need a fixed supply. It wouldn't be hard to establish voting to release a given amount of funds/authorize the selling of bonds. All blockchains have a transient central authority, the miner.
placeybordeaux commented on Bitcoin: Update network descriptions to be more accurate github.com/bitcoin-dot-or... · Posted by u/SnowProblem
Can someone suggest a stable priced crypto that is actually useful for transactions? I have zero interest in speculating on the values of these things, but I would really like to start using crypto currency obtained from cash ATM's for all of my online purchases and avoid ever entering a credit card number anywhere again. Why hasn't that been solved?
I don't think a stablecoin has been made, or at least if it has it hasn't found wide adoption. That is part of the problem, if people couldn't make profit off of speculating on bitcoin it's quite likely that it wouldn't be as widely accepted/talked about.
It wouldn't be too hard to make a inflationary coin, just mint coins proportional to the estimated GH of the network. That would give the coin a price ceiling.
placeybordeaux commented on Is Bitcoin a Bubble? Economists Say ‘Yes’ blogs.wsj.com/economics/2... · Posted by u/thisisit
For ETH, https://ethgasstation.info has not let me down.
That site is saying 0.3 USD. I wouldn't call that pennies.
placeybordeaux commented on Is Bitcoin a Bubble? Economists Say ‘Yes’ blogs.wsj.com/economics/2... · Posted by u/thisisit
The one justification for skyhigh valuations is believing there will be a deus ex machina technology solution that comes out to solve the scalability problems of crypto. Honestly, it could happen (https://lightning.network/ or something else, ideally for on-chain transactions), but in _my_ opinion, betting on that outcome at this time is just not worth it. I believe a more likely scenario is we have a major correction, and then grow from there.
In the worst case (1 tx per channel) LN would actually double the # of tx.
I am really looking forward to LN being really tested, but the thing that worries me is that the security model relies on txing before a certain block. If we see a large amount of the traffic move from on chain to LN then we could get ourselves into a situation where there is a run on the chain to close channels. If there is a large market maker that attempts to steal from a channel that is being used to route many others we could see a mass closing of channels which could push the fees high enough to make it cost prohibitive.
LN isn't a panacea it actually changes the security model.
placeybordeaux commented on Is Bitcoin a Bubble? Economists Say ‘Yes’ blogs.wsj.com/economics/2... · Posted by u/thisisit
Most of the time Ethereum is less than a penny for a simple value transfer, and it does more than twice as many transactions per day as Bitcoin. It's also pretty easy to implement simple payment channels:
http://www.blunderingcode.com/a-lightning-network-in-two-pag...
I was just pulling up avg tx fees. I realize that tx cost on ETH varies highly, do you have a preferred site to tell what contracts are economically viable for what amounts?
For instance I would be happy to buy a cryptokitty or two at the ~1 USD price range, but if the tx fees are ~1 USD then it's obviously a no go.
placeybordeaux commented on Is Bitcoin a Bubble? Economists Say ‘Yes’ blogs.wsj.com/economics/2... · Posted by u/thisisit
Bitcoin doesn’t HAVE to be used for micropayments to be useful.
I sent my friends 50 bucks worth of BTC for christmas time. At that point the fees for regular tx were ~5 bucks so I just bundled them and payed less than a dollar per send, making sure to send the change into a segwit address. I missed someone so I went ahead and sent a one off from a segwit address. That was only 1 buck tx fee. Totally doable for a $50 tx.
But if the valuations are anywhere close to proper we need to have significantly higher throughput.
If I can't send someone 10 bucks on bitcoin it loses a lot of value for me. I've previously used it to pay for lunch/poker w/e when I don't have my wallet and someone that I am with is interested in it. Even litecoin is hitting 1 USD avg tx fee.
placeybordeaux commented on Is Bitcoin a Bubble? Economists Say ‘Yes’ blogs.wsj.com/economics/2... · Posted by u/thisisit
It is still pioneers and early adopters time, people seeing bitcoin as the first possible single currency for the entire planet. We will see how it goes when the masses and legislators come. Utopian it is not anymore and even technically feasible nowadays, so we will have attempts.
Bitcoin is likely going to remain the most conservative of all the cryptocurrencies. Even the most liberial of them is having trouble scaling to the current demand. The current demand is really quite low.