Why Bitcoin Boomed During the Government Shutdown 282
Daniel_Stuckey writes "Just two weeks after the Feds shuttered the Silk Road, the notorious online drug bazaar, Bitcoin prices have touched a five-month high — with a single Bitcoin fetching nearly $156 on Tokyo-based exchange Mt. Gox. Bitcoin's resiliency can no longer be denied, especially as the digital currency continued its ascendancy even against the backdrop of a U.S. government in utter disarray. At the 11th hour of the crisis, President Obama signed a bill that ended the partial government shutdown and, more importantly, raised the debt ceiling, an arbitrary limit on the amount of money the country can borrow that would have been surpassed today. If Congress had failed to reach a deal and the U.S. was unable to pay its bills, the results might have been catastrophic, eclipsing the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers five years ago, the domino that could trigger the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression."
This is proof? Really? (Score:5, Interesting)
How many people honestly understand the relationship between currency prices and the government shutdown? Very very few I would guess.
Gold dropped when the goverment was down and bounced back after the deal was signed. Why? Gold is supposed to be a safe harbour.
Does the author of TFA see BTC as the opposite of gold, or does he see BTC as filling the same kind of role as gold?
Or is this simply a case of making using hindsight to construct an argument that fits a general argument that BTC is worth investing in?
Re:This is proof? Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Gold dropped because the market's built-in assumption that the Fed would keep printing money to finance the government's deficits forever was temporarily shaken by the possibility of maybe some sane fiscal policy showing its head for once. Then gold went back up when the deal was signed, signifying full steam ahead on printing and deficits. It made absolute sense.
But yeah, this article in particular is just a bad case of hindsight bias.
Re:This is proof? Really? (Score:4, Interesting)
But printing money was one of the possible outcomes of hitting the debt ceiling. Both the Fed and the Secretary of the Treasury have the legal authority to declare that they are covering the deficit by creating money rather than borrowing it, and they may well have done so. It wouldn't have been great monetary policy, but there is a reasonable argument that it's better than default.
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It wouldn't have been great monetary policy, but there is a reasonable argument that it's better than default.
Exceeding the debt limit does not mean default. It means that all further spending immediately gets reduced to the level of tax revenue; implying a 30% drop in spending.
It is up to the treasury to prioritize where the cash on hand goes.
Missing a debt payment would not occur, unless Obama's administration decided they wanted to cut off the government's nose, to spite their face.
More like
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Exceeding the debt limit does not mean default. It means that all further spending immediately gets reduced to the level of tax revenue; implying a 30% drop in spending.
It is up to the treasury to prioritize where the cash on hand goes.
They say they have neither the technical ability (the software can't handle the use case) nor the legal authority to prioritize payments (a de facto line item veto). They might just be lying to us, but if you believe they are capable of that, you also believe they totally would default just to prove a point.
Besides, if the government is going to pay you in a couple weeks, we swear, that would be a debt. It has just been shifted away from the people who want to lend us money voluntarily.
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I don't believe the possibility existed, or if it did the market was ignoring it. There was a dip and rebound 1 or 2 October, but 10 October is when it dropped. Republicans were clearly losing by then so it was not fear of fiscal responsibility.
I'm most curious about the drop at the beginning.
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But yeah, this article in particular is just a bad case of hindsight bias.
"I like big butts and I can not lie. You other brothers can't deny, that when a girl walks in with an itty bitty waist and a round thing in your face, you get sprung..."
-Johnathan Coulton.
Hindsight bias, combined with the fact that coins are predominantly round... Thus implying subtle application of the pejorative "Butt Coin". Very skillful.
Indeed: "It made absolute sense" -- Note the "cents" pun play here, but it's subtle... "market's build-in assumption ... showing its head", oh yes, tolling me ever s
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Or is this simply a case of making using hindsight to construct an argument that fits a general argument that BTC is worth investing in?
Economics. The science of explaining tomorrow why the predictions you made yesterday didn't come true today.
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They didn't come true because making predictions about the behaviour of an economic system changes the behaviour of the economic system, because the economic "particles" are self-aware, are trying to outsmart every other particle and can read your predictions.
So, do I win an economic Nobel?
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So, do I win an economic Nobel?
Not quite... sometimes the published economic predictions do come true, even though people can read them. What gives? :)
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Sorry, there is no economic Nobel. Stick around though, you might get a peace one.
Re:This is proof? Really? (Score:5, Interesting)
That is disingenuous at best. Gold peaked at 1900 in 2011 during the housing and financial crises from 400 in 2003. It has been on the way down since then, making a spike unlikely. It took a 3% dip from 10 October and came back to where it was.
All signs point to gold markets knowing this would be a temporary crisis that would not maintain price levels past its resolution. Bitcoin, on the other hand, does not seem to be valued by market savvy investors. Knee jerk irrational fools more like, so it follows the panic more closely.
I'm no economist or fund manager, so I'm probably wrong.
Re:This is proof? Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Gold is an excellent safe haven in the sense that if you have 1kg of gold about $40,000K and civilization collapsed tomorrow you would still have 1kg of gold. If you had that in hard currency all you would have is 40,000 pieces of paper. Though 40,000 pieces of paper would be very valueable as toilet paper. Hmmmmm maybe gold isn't as good of a safe haven as I thought. I need to stock up on US currency.
This is why I don't get folks that want to hoard gold as a hedge against economic fallout. If civilization collapses, gold becomes worthless. In a collapsed economy, gold has no practical value. If civilization collapses, I want things that will actually be useful. Food. Water. Shelter. Guns. Clothing. These are the currency of a collapsed economy, not pretty baubles or shiny bricks.
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This is why I don't get folks that want to hoard gold as a hedge against economic fallout. If civilization collapses, gold becomes worthless. In a collapsed economy, gold has no practical value. If civilization collapses, I want things that will actually be useful. Food. Water. Shelter. Guns. Clothing. These are the currency of a collapsed economy, not pretty baubles or shiny bricks.
Nations fail frequently without a lot of violence or starvation. Gold is useful if the rest of the world keeps going, but your country/region/etc is in a bad crisis.
The goods you mentioned are easy to acquire, and you can't store a lot of wealth in them. If society truly has failed, it's no good to have a lot of land, food or water, this will quickly be looted. If one tries to protect it, one will be killed by the mobs.
Guns is interesting. If you actually try to store your wealth in weaponry, buying lots of
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Wouldn't it be even better to have cash from various countries? Because to use your gold, for example to import stuff, you need to convert it to currency anyway, which might be difficult to do in a crisis. On the other hand, foreign currency might help keep the local economy going, by being a medium of exchange backed by the rest of the world economy.
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China (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:China (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. When Baidu added it as a supported payment method, the game changed.
Re:China exchange controls (Score:5, Interesting)
Right. China has tight exchange controls - it take special permission from the State Ministry for Foreign Exchange to exchange yuan for dollars, euros, or yen. But at present, China residents can buy Bitcoins with yuan. They can also sell Bitcoins for dollars, bypassing exchange controls. So if you've made money in China and want, say, to buy an apartment in London, Bitcoin provides a way to bypass the government exchange controls.
That seems to be what's pushing up the price of Bitcoin. The volume on exchanges in China is way up, while volume at Mt.Gox is way down.
However, there's no guarantee that this situation will last. The People's Bank of China can change this policy at any time. There's plenty of info available about PBOC policy; it's as least as important as US Fed policy. But that's enough for Slashdot readers.
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they will have to either change it or relax yuan export controls.
which they just as well might because it would make it simpler to buy material goods and bring them to china.
Re:China (Score:5, Insightful)
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Do you mean those that used to use dollars? So what changes? They are still oligarchs, drug dealers etc. but they are not using dollars and all those dollars go home and cause inflation upon their arrival. So this is about the US government not making as much from drug dealings?
Re:China (Score:4, Insightful)
Just because your biased doesn't mean your wrong.
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Are you trying to imply that there is a world beyond American shores?
Shocking, right?
Derp (Score:3, Insightful)
If Congress had failed to reach a deal and the U.S. was unable to pay its bills, the results might have been catastrophic, eclipsing the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers five years ago, the domino that could trigger the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression."
Someone's been watching too much "news". The results wouldn't be catastrophic. They'd be annoying. Like everything else the government has done over the past decade. Catastrophic is the entire government collapses, food shortages and water become scarce, and people start killing one another in open anarchy.
Words. They mean shit, Slashdot. Choose them carefully.
Re:Derp (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem isn't that they're using the wrong words, it's that their worlds are too small for the proper order of magnitude for the word. Like a six year old.
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Yeah, man, credit ratings aren't real, they're made up, just like words. And risk, even sudden changes of it in a fundamental part of the world economy like t-bills, that's, like, made up, too.
Not like equating 'catastrophe' with 'anarchy', that's completely honest and not hyperbole at all.
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He meant $500B to pay the INTEREST on the debt. Not the entire debt itself. Point is, if we couldn't borrow more money, we would still have more than enough revenue to continue paying the interest on the debt and thus not default.
It's like having a $10,000 credit card limit that you've maxed out. You want to go buy a new TV with money you don't have, but the banks won't increase your credit limit. So you can't buy the TV, but you can still afford the $35/month minimum payment on your credit card so the
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What if you need the credit to buy gas so you can go to work and earn money? You don't get credit -> you can't go to work -> you lose your revenue and end up bankrupt.
That is the situati
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How much debt is too much? 17 Trillion? 20 Trillion? 50 Trillion? When does it stop? How much money do we continue to borrow from foreign creditors before we realize this model is NOT workable long-term? How much do we borrow before other countries refuse to lend any more to us?
Unless your plan is to significantly raise taxes. And if you think THAT won't have a negative impact on the world's economy, try it and see... Or maybe the plan is to collapse the entire system and start fresh with a new one
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What if you need the credit to buy gas so you can go to work and earn money? You don't get credit -> you can't go to work -> you lose your revenue and end up bankrupt.
The world doesn't end. You take the TV back, or you walk over to the nearest neighbor or pawn shop, and hoc the TV for the $50 in gas money you need.
And you praise the lord, that the credit card company put a stop to your out-of-control unsustainable spending at $10,000, instead of at $50,000.
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It wouldn't have even been annoying unless someone - say, some jerk petty enough to put barricades around open air monuments - would have tried to stop payments on debt service. We had easily enough money coming in to cover the debt service, so it would have only been a problem had someone purposely done that to harm the US.
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We had easily enough money coming in to cover the debt service, so it would have only been a problem had someone purposely done that to harm the US.
A constitutional violation of oath.... a high crime worthy of impeachment....
Re:Derp (Score:5, Insightful)
Go on thinking that, Pollyanna, if it helps you sleep at night.
The shutdown wasn't really a big deal, sure, but if the US had defaulted on its debt, that would have been catastrophic.
We owe around $16 trillion right now. But it's really not a big deal, because we pay negative interest on it (relative to inflation). Countries are eager to keep investing in the US, and the high demand lets us pay very low interest. If US debt were seen as unsafe, we would need to pay MUCH higher interest in order to attract investors. We obviously wouldn't be able to pay the higher interest, since this scenario is based on the assumption that Congress refuses to even repay the principle. So we would have to start paying out $16 trillion without replacement investments coming in.
Goodbye, Medicare. Goodbye, Social Security. Goodbye, foodstamps and welfare and section 8. Hello, social upheaval. Hello, desperation-induced crime wave. Hello, Great Depression.
That's your idea of "annoying"? I'd say "catastrophic" is a far more apt description.
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The point was that the US was at 0% risk of defaulting on its debt.
You might as well write a long post about the potential ills of earth being invaded by married bachelors; it had an equal chance of happening.
Re:Derp (Score:4, Funny)
Goodbye, Medicare. Goodbye, Social Security. Goodbye, foodstamps and welfare and section 8. Hello, social upheaval. Hello, desperation-induced crime wave. Hello, Great Depression.
Of course a lot of the good science fiction starts right after that point, so I say BRING IT! :)
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Goodbye, Medicare. Goodbye, Social Security. Goodbye, foodstamps and welfare and section 8. Hello, social upheaval. Hello, desperation-induced crime wave. Hello, Great Depression.
That's your idea of "annoying"? I'd say "catastrophic" is a far more apt description.
Wow, the amount of pessimism here is amazing. Do you really believe that the entire health of US economy and society is dependent on our entitlement programs?
I don't think we've quite reach the point where the majority of Americans are proles on the dole, I don't think losing those entitlement programs would be a bad thing. Would it cause some problems? Of course it would, and the politicians would take a heavy beating in the media (which, don't kid yourself, is the *real* reason this was never going to def
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So what you're saying is that we can never afford an interest rate hike? Sounds like a solid plan...
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I'd like to amend your sentence such that instead of "If US debt were seen as unsafe
Re:Derp (Score:4, Informative)
1) That the Treasury has the power to pick and choose who gets paid.
2) That the payments are made all at the same time so we don't have cashflow issues for different payment dates.
3) That telling people other than bondholders, "Yes, we agreed to pay you, but we're not going to," is something other than a default and that the credit markets would see this as A-OK.
I don't think that any of these things are true, and even if some are, it seems pretty unlikely that all of them are true.
Banks Tried to Shut it down (Score:5, Insightful)
Bad news, banks and government attacking at same time interfered with each other.
Also, they had this guy, he sold drugs... lots of drugs... but did they bust him? Nope, they did an elaborate sting to bag him for something REALLY REALLY evil... (I hate drugs btw) Why? So he wouldn't be a martyr for free wealth exchange.
Also the whole BTC aren't totally anonymous thing is a good to know.
Default Only If We Chose To (Score:3, Informative)
The U.S. Government gets somewhere between $200 billion and $225 billion a month in tax payments. I forget the exact figure, but let's say debt payments are around $50 billion a month.
We would only default if we chose to pay our debt with the lowest priority.
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We would only default if we chose to pay our debt with the lowest priority.
Right, spending cuts could have covered the difference, if credit worthiness was the top priority. Oh, but that's an unmentionable inside the beltway.
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"not technically part of the government expenditures" which is why people, falsely, claim that Clinton left us with a surplus. We sort of had an excess of funds in the category we have to count, technically, and ignored the larger portion that we, technically, ignore.
bogus one sided claim (Score:2, Insightful)
If Congress had failed to reach a deal and the U.S. was unable to pay its bills, the results might have been catastrophic ...
While I realize that most /. synopses are just cut and pasted from the referenced article, it would nice if we could avoid clipping one-sided political hype at the same time. While a default might have been bad, there are many who believe that letting a man destroy the value of the dollar and the country by unchecked borrowing is even worse. This latest surrender by the Republica
Honeypot? (Score:3)
I thought this was an interesting take on Bitcoin:
http://ianso.blogspot.com/2013/10/bitcoin-as-law-enforcementnatsec.html [blogspot.com]
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Here's where you stop reading:
"1) Bitcoin was almost certainly a team effort. The design has been peer-reviewed and is found to be remarkably secure, complete and well-rounded[1]. I argue that this suggests that a peer-review or quality control process has already been applied. If one individual cryptographer had written Bitcoin, it would contain far more idiosyncracies than it does, not just in the cryptosystem design but also in the C++ code itself."
Now... go get a copy of the 0.1 bitcoin client - the one that Satoshi wrote - and take a look at the code. It's hideous. Really bad.
I've seen other articles where people consider Bitcoin evidence of some kind of post-singularity intelligence at work.
It's clueless n00bs who didn't notice Bitcoin until 2013, and are apparently so narcissistic that since they weren't paying attention during 2009-2012 they assume nothing of importance happened then, so Bitcoin must have been dropped in our laps in its present form by some kind of omniscient cyber-god.
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Well, we're living creatures so we have almost ridiculous amount of interal complexity compared to nonliving things. We are sapient, so we've gone past evolutionary singularity too. And a large and rapidly increasing number of us live in an utopia of wealth, peace and equality that resembles heaven on earth from the point of view of, say, a medieval peasant.
So, we've already past two singul
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Comment removed (Score:3)
You all missed the real reason for the increase (Score:3)
Swiss banks now making financial data available to governments. Switching to bitcoin as an anonymous alternative is inevitable.
Question (Score:2)
Okay, this is bothering me for some time. A friend told me during the shutdown that the government could, as a last resort, create a trillion dollar coin (or some such amount) and start paying their debts without congressional oversight. He also claimed that this method would have had essentially no bad effects on the economy and was just a way to circumvent the debt ceiling. Is that true? Can someone explain to me in layman's terms how it would work?
Obviously, if that was so easy they'd have done it, so th
the US Govt is so corrupt (Score:2, Interesting)
fuck the govt, they are a bunch of mooching criminals, and i dont approve of what they spend the tax revenue they collect,
Bitcoin - What if? (Score:3)
I would be scared if I didn't have some Bitcoins right now. If they go to zero, oh well.. If they get adopted as a major international currency, then I completely miss out by not having them now.
There will never be enough Bitcoins for everyone to have one. If they do catch on, each one will be worth a fortune. So far, no government has been able to figure out a way to shut them down. Large governments such as China and Germany have announced no intentions against Bitcoin. It makes me believe the people that are Bitcoins' biggest detractors are the ones that don't own any yet.
The media tries to associate Bitcoin with lawbreakers and it calls it an insanely risky bet. But, the media does everything it can to preserve the status quo. Then, limit your risks.. You cannot risk more than the price you pay for the Bitcoins. I think it is a bigger risk to decide you will completely ignore the obvious next form of currency.
Re: Nobody cares about bitcoin (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you freaking kidding? Why is it that every half wit thinks that bitcoin is all about drug transactions and prostitution?
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The internet for example, is for porn - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWEjvCRPrCo [youtube.com]
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Blame Silk Road?
Re: Nobody cares about bitcoin (Score:5, Insightful)
They aren't even anonymous transactions... if you convert bitcoins to cash, that's a major weakness.
And they have a great use: eliminating payment processing costs. Those costs are distributed among the people who run the mining software.
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So as new coins become rarer with the diminishing rate, there will be fewer miners, and that means more validating workload dumped on the miners still running, increasing their costs as their expected profit diminishes, right?
I have not paid much attention to the implementation of Bitcoin, rather focusing on the economic implications. What happens as miners drop off the network?
Re: Nobody cares about bitcoin (Score:4, Interesting)
If people stop mining, then the currency stops being created... no matter - that will happen eventually anyway.. More likely, the price of bitcoins will continue to rise as usage does, and this will drive more people to mine. If usage does not increase, then who cares if they are mined or not?
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If people stop mining, each miner gets more per time interval. Which makes it very attractive to mine again. Its a self-regulating system.
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If people stop mining, each miner gets more per time interval. Which makes it very attractive to mine again. Its a self-regulating system.
Unless there are no more coins left, at which point the miners will only do verification. It's probable that the mining network will shrink to a fraction of its current size as miners realise that it's not profitable to run that rig just for a percentage of transactions.
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How did we get from
And they have a great use: eliminating payment processing costs. Those costs are distributed among the people who run the mining software.
to
That "percentage" is not an actual percentage, but a minimum fee you have to pay for a miner to accept your transaction into their verification process... and each miner can set their own.
in just 5 posts?
No wonder I haven't grokked bitcoin yet.
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I am not sure what the issue is. You can send an unlimited amount of bitcoin for a fee of .0005 BTC which is less then 10cents. Pay 10k with Mastercard and they take a 3% cut. ($300)
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The algorithm compensates, and delivers bitcoins at a predicable rate, unlike the US government's payments. If miners drop out, those who remain split the spoils.
I sold all my coins and bought my wife a nice silicon-carbide necklace fashioned out of Cree's materials, for about $500. I don't feel good about the use bitcoins are being put to, even if I do support the freedom that untraceable electronic money represents.
Re: Nobody cares about bitcoin (Score:4, Insightful)
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Part of the incentive for mining is also in earning transaction fees for confirming transactions.
Re: Nobody cares about bitcoin (Score:5, Insightful)
The difficulty parameter autoadjusts depending on the number of miners. Less miners = easier difficulty.
There should always be a new block every 10 mins (on average).
Also while the benefits of mining diminish, the 'fees' should increase with the use of bitcoin.
At some point the fees overtake the benefit of finding a new block.
Remember the fees get paid to the block finder.
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Actually, miner workload stays the same while profit increases, due to collecting transaction fees from more transactions.
Well, as we're demonstrating here, you can't predict
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>Buying pirated software.
>Buying
>pirated software
ok
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No, but someone who pays for pirated software is.
Re: Nobody cares about bitcoin (Score:5, Insightful)
Or maybe because what I buy is my business and my business alone? Without anonymity, it makes it trivial for people to track my purchases. If people can track my purchases, they can target me for their sales campaigns in order to try and manipulate me into giving them more money, Since I'm not terribly fond of being manipulated, nor am I terribly fond of junk mail or spam, I prefer my transactions to be as anonymous as possible.
But yeah, I guess you're right, it's all about the hookers and blow, Couldn't possibly be any other reason I don't want folks up in my business.
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Or maybe because what I buy is my business and my business alone? ... Couldn't possibly be any other reason I don't want folks up in my business.
Well, if you don't want anyone else in your business, and what you buy is your own business, then you're buying from yourself... I imagine the "employee discount" is amazing.
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Because, like I said, anonymous transactions do not benefit ANYONE, except those who wish to hide their transactions. Why would they want to hide their transaction? To hide the activities for which such transactions have taken place.
Example: Selling drugs. Buying drugs. Buying guns. Selling guns. Selling pirated software. Buying pirated software. And of course, reaping investments without paying income tax, aka TAX EVASION. As well as building up ponzi schemes, of course.
I guess you want to outlaw cold hard cash too then, eh?
Re: anonymous transactions (Score:2)
Yes, Hi "gapagos".
"Anonymous transactions do not benefit anyone", hmm? Give me your name and address right now. I will drive over and say hello.
Unless you decide that "anonymous" has its uses.
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Bitcoin value as an anonymous way to pay for things is dubious at best. Every transaction is logged in the blockchain. It is easier to trace then cash. The real advantage is in frictionless payments (i.e. cutting out money processors like visa, paypal or even western union). You should take the time to learn about something rather then spewing out your nonsense. The bitcoin protocol itself can even be leveraged for other uses besides currency. There are many many legit uses of bitcoin. You can buy al
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Re:Nobody cares about bitcoin (Score:4, Funny)
I use BitCoin to make donations to various Linux projects. That way when I download all those Linux ISOs on BitTorrent, I really feel like I'm sticking it to The Man.
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As opposed to all of that nice, clean cash in your wallet, which very likely carries only trace amounts of cocaine [snopes.com]?
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Nobody uses cold hard cash anymore, except people who have a reason to hide where their money goes. E.g. drug dealers and pirates.
See how easy that is to turn around? There is a need for a currency that can be used without giving a cut to major payment processors, I am surprised that you cannot understand that.
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Re:Crisis not solved, made worse (Score:5, Informative)
Correction. Threatening not to raise the debt ceiling lead to a credit rating downgrade. Explicitly saying in public that you're thinking about not honoring your financial obligations does that.
Re:Crisis not solved, made worse (Score:5, Informative)
You liar. The credit rating downgrade wasn't because we raised the ceiling, it was because the Republicans threatened not to.
The ratings agency EXPLICITLY SAID SO:
The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America's governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed. The statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy.
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No, you are the liar. The agencies that downgraded the US debt (and it is JUNK today, anybody who doesn't understand it has his or her head up their own asshole) were sued by the US gov't.
Of-course they were supposed to downgrade it to junk, the only agency that really downgraded the US bonds (Egan Jones) was stripped of their license to rate US debt. The sequester (cut to the spending) was the condition, the promise, under which the US gov't wouldn't be downgraded further (and eventually the worthless 'rat
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USA did NOT have to default on its creditors, 2300BILLION USD are collected per year by the feds, less than 300BILLION USD need to be paid out as the interest.
Obama, other politicians, the MSM all came out and told the bond holders: you are the low men on the totem pole, we won't pay you if we can't borrow more from you even though we collect almost 10 times the money in taxes that we need to pay you.
Anybody in their sane mind would see this as a direct threat against their assets (US bonds or dollars) if they have any and would immediately start unloading, but then again, this was obvious for a couple of decades now what is going on, specifically after the real default in 1971, when Nixon defaulted on the gold dollar.
Apparently you got downmodded for speaking the truth.
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Triple A status (Score:2)
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Our debt to GDP ratio has been higher in the past and we brought it back in line without a major crisis. Japan has gone substantially higher without any signs of collapse. These issues can be handled by thinking long term and making long term adjustments.
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These issues can be handled by thinking long term and making long term adjustments.
You do realise that you are talking about the US, right? Where "long term" is next quarter or next election...
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Rebuilding the developed world isn't really a good recipe for success. The correct way to look at it marcoeconomically is, "our trading partners were in ruins." There's a common myth that having Europe sitting as a smoking pile of wreckage was good for us. Most economists would disagree.
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Since the US is so outrageously in debt and has no way to reduce it without selling the rest of the government assets,
Balancing the budget is easy. Dump the military, nationalize all medicine into a single payer system, and you are done. That'll cut the budget in half. Raise capital gains taxes to earned income levels, and eliminate 99% of income tax deductions. Income will increase, spending will decrease, and the budget will have an instant surplus. The debt will be paid off in 10-20 years. If you want to pinch pennies, reform patents, and the NSA/CIA/FBI to minimalistic levels to defend life and liberty, but not p
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Balancing the budget is easy. Dump the military
While I agree with the sentiment, in actual fact the military is one ginormous jobs program, not only for the couple hundred thousand actually putting their lives on the line, but for the millions employed by the MIC.
You chop that off too quickly and the economy crashes leading to GDP losses in greater proportion to the cuts. See pretty much the last 50 years of austerity measures, all countries included.
That is whats fscked up about the economic system we have
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A quadrillion-dollar platinum coin will achieve the same results while strengthening our military, eliminate individual and business income tax, single payer health insurance, cover all unfunded suitabilities, instant debt pay off, and larger government to absorb all those unemployed (A guaranteed national employment plan), with money left over.
Now, where do I run for office?
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Think of the optics:
UN doctors treating US patients in huge deteriorating teaching hospitals for free.
UN teachers educating US students in deteriorating sandstone universities for free.
UN food aid bringing measured organic diets to US civilians in huge deteriorating cities for free.
UN engineers remapping the US coastline with protected nature sanctuaries to ensure none of the local population is
Re:Not to worry (Score:5, Insightful)
Much in the same way as bitcoin isn't backed by anything real or stable, just demand.
What is backed by "real and stable"? US currency? Nop, it gets devalued pretty fast. Gold? Real Estate? (How much Real Estate do you put in your wallet when going grocery shopping?)
Humans used to use all sort of currency, from sea shells to alcohol to pretty pieces of paper we have today. None of them backed by anything, just convenience. Maybe bitcoin is the next "it"
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If we had a surplus ten years ago, why did the debt never decrease? Oh yeah, because their was never a surplus.