Well, it hasn’t gone away, has it.
No it hasn’t.
All sorts of “economists” said it was doomed etc… and who knows, maybe it is. But not today, no… not today.
Today it’s clocking in at over 1 per $13 – back from the crash of last year… it’s been a long, slow (but incredibly fast by the standards of normal currencies) climb. I sold mine pre-crash at about 1btc : $20 – I’m going to start buying $100 worth a week I think… regardless of exchange rate.
Anyhoo… couple of things have happened of late…
1) Bitcoin now has a proper bank bank.
- Our user’s funds will actually be held at the Credit Mutuel under the user’s name, they will be separate from Paymium’s funds (on the other hand, all of other exchanges funds for example sit in the same account, and are considered by their bank to be their corporate property)
- Our user’s accounts will be protected by the “Garantie des dépôts” which is the French equivalent of the American FDIC (the insurance cap applies to each account individually, and not to the sum of all user balances, so unless your EUR balance exceeds 100kEUR your fiat is 100% insured by the French taxpayer)
- Each account will in a few months get its very own IBAN number, users will be able to use it as any other bank account, have their salaries and pensions sent there and have them automatically converted to Bitcoin if they so wish)
- Each user will soon be able to order its own debit card that will use their EUR and BTC balance to honor purchases and cash withdrawals
- We’ll have direct access to the banking networks which will let us 100% automate all incoming and outgoing transfers
- Corporations will have an actual financial institution talking with them if they wish to start accepting Bitcoin and be safe from a regulatory point of view
- Paymium will have a much better legal standing and a much higher attractivity for second and third-round investors
- Paymium will be in a much better position to make its vision become true : make all our transactions, be they denominated in crypto or fiat currency, flow through the pipes of the Bitcoin network
This is being trumpeted as very big news – considered to be a major step towards legitimacy… which is to say it has been “accepted” by mainstream economics (or whatever you call it).
I have this vague misgiving though.. that the whole point of bitcoin is that it isn’t monitorable by “mainstream economics”, which is in itself illegitimate. The whole point of it is to stop govts and corporations tracking our every move.
So maybe that isn’t the point.
Income I make from Bitcoin I declare anyway (it’s only illegal if you don’t declare income to the IRD). I declare it because I gladly pay tax, so if my neighbour gets sick, he doesn’t lose his house. Everyone in my street does the same – it’s a nice street. Nice town. Nice country… and everyone contributing their share is what makes it a nice country. People that don’t, quite rightly go to prison. If you don’t like it, fuck off to some country without public infrastructure… but choose carefully, because I’ve seen countries like that, and they’re fucking horrible – and ALWAYS wind up costing you more.
2) Iran.
Iranians are (apparently) using bitcoins as a hedge against a currency under attack by the US.
This is The New Protestantism. It’s all fun and games until someone needs to divorce a Catholic.
Sooner or later, these bête noires of top-down control, become the life-or-death possibility of some outlier, and then the world changes. I’m expecting something of the sort to happen with Corporate-Information-Monopolies (otherwise known as “IP”) and generic drugs. Somewhere like India or Brazil is going to reject corporate-information-monopolies, because not to do so will result in the deaths of millions of their people.
If this is what is happening with bitcoin in Iran, then I think it’s significant – not so much because of the outcome or the scale, but because of the underlying tectonics that are driving it.
Someone, somewhere, said “there’s no such thing as fate, just demographics”… and apropos of “location*3″…
tectonics
tectonics
tectonics
3) Iceland are talking (at least) about scrapping fractional reserve.
So there you go.
On Addiction
And The Void Mooned Back...
The Spirit Of The World
A Machine to Steal Souls
More Anti Digital
Thync
Robotic Sensory Loops and Whatnot
Cartestian Robot Roundup.
Post-Scarcity Link-Dump
Servo Bender
“I declare it because I gladly pay tax, so if my neighbour gets sick, he doesn’t lose his house.”
Hahaha so you gladly pay taxes, because taxes give money to those who you would give money to directly if you didn’t have to pay so much in taxes? HAHAHA. Idiocy. If you didn’t have to pay as much in taxes, you could give directly to those in need, rather than it being sucked up by special interests and needy people who are poor through stupidity. Taxation doesn’t help those who are worth helping, people like you and I help them. Taxation only helps the idiots, and steals money from you and I to finance them.
How do you get around the fact that without taxation, YOU, not some potentially wasteful spender, would have control over where your money goes?
Oh right – poor people are poor because they’re stupid.
Good luck with that. It’ll be you before long – because you live in a country where 60% of personal bankruptcies are due to illness.
That’s going to be you one day. You or someone close to you.
—
Here’s an exercise for you – draw a map of all the OECD countries… chart all social metrics… including “value for money” spent on healthcare… and compare it to levels of social spending.
What do you see?
The things you think are a good idea, lead to worse outcomes.
The truth is, people like you need to be told what to do. You have the morality of a child.
—
PS: Don’t move to New Zealand, or any other country in the OECD mate, you’re not going to like it. Try somewhere like The Congo. Take your gun.
Ya i am going with reverse causation on that one, people are stupid because they are poor not the other way around. I have been to prison, the people there were all poor long before they were convicts. I mean it is easy to flip it around and it still kind looks right, blame those stupid people for making us poorer, gives us something to do with ourselves (i say “ourselves” because i got 10 to 1 odds Mr Steve is from the good old US of A). By the way that was a great post and you picked one tiny comment about taxes to flush out. Sorry Steve dont mean to be rude, just sharing my opinion, for what its worth (which is nothing)
Besides that, Does this mean i can finally participate in an economy that does not directly benefit from war famine poverty and sickness? Almost makes me want to start using money again, maybe get a job, payed in all bitcoins, use all the proceeds to change the world. you know, buy rattle cans and tag “I LOVE YOU” all over town. Something frivolous like that, to express the great abundance we have in this modern era.
Looks like it is beginning, Iceland, bitcoins. we just celebrated our new holiday yesterday Dec. 6 Nation marijuana legalization day (at least for Washington state) Good Luck to you in this PIE (Post-Industrial Era) or maybe Pre-Lateral Era or something stupid and catchy so kids can remember it through generations. Sorry, rambling now Be well and happy, I love you
“The truth is, people like you need to be told what to do. You have the morality of a child.”
Given the fact – as you seem to agree – that most people are inconsiderate and selfish, the optimal way to let those of us who are fair have the most power is to let us keep more of our money. Stupidity is indeed the origin of poverty, manifesting in the choice to reproduce before having the means to pay for it. Smart people wait until they can pay for [whatever] before they get [whatever]. Dumb people just buy things or create babies without thinking about the future, or worrying about paying for them. Socialist policies enable this short-term time preference, and therefore give advantage to dumber people.
@Jampel
Yes – different set of biasses with bitcoin… which have yet to play out I think. Douglas Rushkoff wrote a book about it a couple of years ago. Talks about it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qypsaxaXJ-c
Bitcoin is not the same as a currency that is based on the value we create though. It’s still created in scarcity, with “friction”… and the way it’s working at the moment, there’s an incentive to hoard. It’s a way out of the chronic parasitism of the banks though.
As to war… I think that’s more to do with institutional corruption – the state, and powerful interests… and the way out of that one, is de-corrupting our institutions, starting with the Govt – which is (despite what my learned colleague here seems to think) is how we organise ourselves. Weakening this organisation in the face of private tyrrany has never, ever led to a reduction in war, sickness etc.
As to being poor making people stupid – yup – walk onto any council estate in the UK, and it’s there clear as day. I know, I used to live on one. Intelligence is more complex than that though… and what we’re actually talking about here is social mobility. Social policy is… “social”. It’s about large numbers of people, and aggregated behaviour… it’s about what actually works in measurable practice, not what works only in the minds of right-wing children like my esteem colleague here.
@Steve
Your logic is all over the place like a mad-woman’s piss. Where do you get this shit from? Are you just making it up?
You sound like a 14 year old trying to reinvent Nashian Game Theory.
None of your assumptions are “facts”. None of your logical contortions bear any resemblance to what Actually Happens.
Just because it works in your mind, doesn’t mean it works. That is why we have scientific method. Try it some time.
Here’s a little exercise for you. Don’t come back until you’ve finished it.
1) make a list of about 10 or so countries.
2) order them by levels of social-spending. In your terms “socialist”
3) compare the birth rates.
When you’ve done that, just to broaden your education, compare other social metrics, here’s a starter:
– happiness
– infant-mortality
– drug abuse
– wealth disparity
– teenage pregnancy
– social mobility
– personal debt
– prison population
– violent crime
– health costs
– education
– birth rate (again, in case it didn’t sink in the first time)
etc etc.
Notice anything?
I’m not sure if you were paying attention in school when you were taught about the scientific method… but here’s (roughly) how it goes
1) make observation
2) formulate hypothesis
3) design (repeatable) experiment to disprove hypothesis
4) publish
What it is not:
1) formulate hypothesis
2) ignore observation
3) claim hypothesis is fact
4) publish
Logic fail. Europe was the wealthiest set of nations in the world BEFORE the modern socialist policies were put in place. It shows the shallowness of your thought that you gloss over that very obvious fact.
Socialism is a parasite that REQUIRES a healthy level of wealth. Look to Cuba for your socialist paradise. Look to USSR, North Korea. Cubans have free health care. It’s like you live in a bubble. We’ve tried command economies. Look at the difference between North and South Korea. You have it exactly backwards. Nations grow wealthy through free market capitalism, which produces so much existent, tangible wealth (measured by standard of living criteria), which then allows for socialist policies to be tolerated because the standard of living (SOL) from giving people complete freedom to transact creates such a huge disparity between the average SOL and our actual level of contentment, that we don’t mind losing huge chunks of our income for social policies. The problem is that this allows for the increased reproduction of those who don’t plan for their future. In an environment where your children are guaranteed to be taken care of whether you pay for them or not… a person with a low intelligence will be less disincentivized to have fewer children. Socialism creates the roots of its eventual downfall.
I’m a huge proponent of purely scientific method thinking, which is why I’m atheist. We’re individual nodes of sensory information, and individual anomalies (akin to religious claims of supernatural divination) are kept in check by the observations of the rest of us.
Again, socialism has been tried, and we have existing socialist (it’s a continuum… anarchy on one end, dictator/small-group-of-bureaucrats on the other). The most controlled groups have the lowest standard of living. The USSR, Cuba and North Korea are the purest examples. Europe’s birth rate is below replacement. They are destroying themselves with foreign immigration. They continue to thrive against this parasitic socialist govt system purely through a high intelligence. However, I am sympathetic to huge ratios of wealth discrepancies. Japan is rather healthy in this regard, with a ratio of about 50:1 of the highest paid to lowest, but they have a healthy, homogenous, xenophobic culture.
I didn’t bother reading your comment – the first line (as has been the case with all you comments) was factually untrue.
Go away, and come back with time-lines of European “socialism” (as you call it) vs prosperity.
Here’s the US version : http://www.hyperhistory.com/online_n2/connections_n2/great_depression.html
Go do the same with EU countries. Don’t come back until you have.
—
Oh… hang on…
You haven’t :
1) made a list of about 10 or so countries.
2) ordered them by levels of social-spending. In your terms “socialist”
3) compare the birth rates.
—
Until you come back with actual data, I’m deleting everything else you post.
I have no interest in providing an outlet for another right-wing crank.
I won’t answer you until you:
Do 100 things without explaining why they’re important. Odd way to debate.
Here’s a tidbit on Norway, the “socialist paradise”, due to capitalist oil wealth, not socialism.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/07/the_norwegian_miracle.html
The Onion rebutts the libertarian position better than I ever could:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/tea-party-congressman-calls-for-tax-breaks-to-put,21242/
http://www.theonion.com/articles/republicans-vote-to-repeal-obamabacked-bill-that-w,19025/
Tom, I could see that happening… and being justified, given the inefficiency of government operations. Government gets to tax (steal from) everyone to fund its operations, whereas everyone else has to *succeed* to get funding for its operations. Stealing produces inferior results vs. directly fighting a problem. Financing your own security is more cost effective than paying taxes for a police force who can’t possibly be there when you actually have someone fighting you.
The problem with people like you is you think words create reality, not vice versa. “Asteroid Destruction and American Preservation Act” to you means 100% success guaranteed. I see it as unnecessary coercion. If an asteroid is damning our planet, those with the most money have the most to lose, and would therefore voluntarily fund the most optimal sounding solution to destroy the asteroid. Why assume that a monopoly who steals money from everyone and has a huge PR dept would be more successful than, say, a group of scientists asking for direct donations. The basic mechanism of government – its ability to steal rather than have to persuade through scientific proof that their solution is best – leads to failure more than the private free market system that has competition.
Steve, you’re an idiot. Go away.
A quote from Steve:
“I’m a huge proponent of purely scientific method thinking”
Another quote from Steve:
“I am sympathetic to huge ratios of wealth discrepancies. Japan is rather healthy in this regard, with a ratio of about 50:1 of the highest paid to lowest, but they have a healthy, homogenous, xenophobic culture.”
What do scientists say about inequality in Japan? (look at the graph)
http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why
What else do scientists say about inequality? (click on the links and look at the graphs)
http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why/evidence
Scientists sure say some interesting things that one would think would be of considerable relevance in informing the political opinions of people who happen to be “a huge proponent of purely scientific method thinking”!
PAGE NOT FOUND for both links.
The page has been redesigned sometime between the 15th and 19th of Dec.
First link:
http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/research/why-more-equality
Second link:
http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/research?field_research_subject_tid=All