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#Post#: 2066--------------------------------------------------
Cryptonomicon
By: RE Date: December 14, 2021, 7:31 pm
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I just finished re-reading Cryptonomicon, one of my favorite
novels. Actually, listening, since I borrowed it as an audio
book from the library system. Shipped down to me for free from
Fairbanks, since there was no copy on audio here in the valley.
It was written by Neal Stephenson, now also creditedwith coining
the term "Metaverse".
Now, I'll try not to ruin the plot for those of you who haven't
read it, but it all centers around Cryptography and how that wa
what really won WWII, not the tank battles. By the end of the
book, it has worked its way around to Crypto Currency and how
that will save the world from another Holocaust. It's very
prescient in terms of predicting the rise of crypto currency,
given it was written more than a decade before the blockchain
mania took off.
In this listen-thru however, I saw all the holes that now bother
me but did not 20 years ago. First off, all Neal's heroes are
brilliant mathematicians. Neal is constantly trying to impress
the reader with his own brilliance and knowledge of math. The
biggest flaw though is that crypto can actually be useful as
currency. In the book at least their crypto ends up being
backed by GOLD though, so if you are a gold bug you can buy it
has value. This however is not true of the crypto that has
actually evolved. It is backed by nothing other than itself.
1 Bitcoin = ...1 Bitcoin. lol.
Everything else is just speculative value. How many Dollars
will somebody pay to buy a Bitcoin? How much Gold? This value
can bounce around wildly depending on the newz and who decides
to buy or sell a large quantity of bitcoins. Thus you had a 20%
drop in the value of bitcoins when a "Whale" sold off about $1B
of them. This is like having $10 in your wallet and somebody
grabbing 2 of them. For money, this does not meet the criteria
of a good store of value.
So now the BOE warns us that your Bitcoins can become worthless.
HTML https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/14/bitcoin-could-become-worthless-bank-of-england-warns
Well, so could dollars, pounds, euros or yen, but at least they
have their Goobermints backing them with military power. Who
backs the bitcoins and with what? Nobody and nothing.
Cryptonomicon is a good story, but it's a math geeks view that
math is the ultimate savior, which it is not. You have to have
something REAL behind the math.
RE
#Post#: 2071--------------------------------------------------
Re: Cryptonomicon
By: Phil Potts Date: December 14, 2021, 10:34 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=RE link=topic=91.msg2066#msg2066 date=1639531891]
I just finished re-reading Cryptonomicon, one of my favorite
novels. Actually, listening, since I borrowed it as an audio
book from the library system. Shipped down to me for free from
Fairbanks, since there was no copy on audio here in the valley.
It was written by Neal Stephenson, now also creditedwith coining
the term "Metaverse".
Now, I'll try not to ruin the plot for those of you who haven't
read it, but it all centers around Cryptography and how that wa
what really won WWII, not the tank battles. By the end of the
book, it has worked its way around to Crypto Currency and how
that will save the world from another Holocaust. It's very
prescient in terms of predicting the rise of crypto currency,
given it was written more than a decade before the blockchain
mania took off.
In this listen-thru however, I saw all the holes that now bother
me but did not 20 years ago. First off, all Neal's heroes are
brilliant mathematicians. Neal is constantly trying to impress
the reader with his own brilliance and knowledge of math. The
biggest flaw though is that crypto can actually be useful as
currency. In the book at least their crypto ends up being
backed by GOLD though, so if you are a gold bug you can buy it
has value. This however is not true of the crypto that has
actually evolved. It is backed by nothing other than itself.
1 Bitcoin = ...1 Bitcoin. lol.
Everything else is just speculative value. How many Dollars
will somebody pay to buy a Bitcoin? How much Gold? This value
can bounce around wildly depending on the newz and who decides
to buy or sell a large quantity of bitcoins. Thus you had a 20%
drop in the value of bitcoins when a "Whale" sold off about $1B
of them. This is like having $10 in your wallet and somebody
grabbing 2 of them. For money, this does not meet the criteria
of a good store of value.
So now the BOE warns us that your Bitcoins can become worthless.
HTML https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/14/bitcoin-could-become-worthless-bank-of-england-warns
Well, so could dollars, pounds, euros or yen, but at least they
have their Goobermints backing them with military power. Who
backs the bitcoins and with what? Nobody and nothing.
Cryptonomicon is a good story, but it's a math geeks view that
math is the ultimate savior, which it is not. You have to have
something REAL behind the math.
RE
[/quote]
The worst and best thing about Bitcoin is you can mine it
yourself with enough computers and the more the merrier. This
isn't a green solution to govt tracking and taking your
greenback, even if it makes btc impossible to oversupply
#Post#: 2073--------------------------------------------------
Re: Cryptonomicon
By: RE Date: December 15, 2021, 1:33 am
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[quote author=Phil Potts link=topic=91.msg2071#msg2071
date=1639542896]
The worst and best thing about Bitcoin is you can mine it
yourself with enough computers and the more the merrier. This
isn't a green solution to govt tracking and taking your
greenback, even if it makes btc impossible to oversupply
[/quote]
True early on, not so true now. The supply isn't infinite. 90%
have already been "mined" out. The easy to find ones got mined
out early, now it's much harder. What you once could do with
your home PC, now you need a Supercomputer or huge array of PCs
to do, consuming just gobs of electricity. In analogy to Gold,
what an individual could do with a pick and shovel eventually
takes a huge hydraulics setup to do.
While you can hide how much BTC you have, you can't hide the
fact you have it or use it for transactions. Goobermints can
simply make it illegal to use. Not Legal Tender. This besides
the problem that if the power goes out, it's useless.
Nevertheless, it's a huge speculative bubble that a fewpeople
got very rich on getting in early. A Ponzi.
RE
#Post#: 2075--------------------------------------------------
Crypto Prices Seemingly Jump by Billions of Dollars as CoinMarke
tCap Goes Berserk
By: RE Date: December 15, 2021, 2:15 am
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Perfect timing. ;D
HTML https://gizmodo.com/crypto-prices-seemingly-jump-by-billions-of-dollars-as-1848216602
Crypto Prices Seemingly Jump by Billions of Dollars as
CoinMarketCap Goes Berserk
RE
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