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#16
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Maybe another reason your PC has slowed down
In message , Ken Blake
writes: On Thu, 7 Feb 2019 15:36:37 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote: In message , Mayayana writes: [] Money is weird stuff, isn't it? Bitcoin is hard to make and limited in supply. In those respects it's a lot like gold. Why was gold worth money? Mostly because it's both limited and immutable. So a few people got rich mining it, but mostly it served as a stable, neutral medium of transaction. Jewels are similar. Yes, but gold and jewels have intrinsic uses as well: Some, but very few. gold doesn't corrode, is useful for making jewellery (which lasts, and it is easier to work than stainless steel), Yes, but to me, jewelry has no intrinsic value. Nor does much art. However, they are pleasing to some, and therefore some are willing to pay for them. However, the amount paid for bitcoins outweighs the artistic value, if any - plus, if that was the reason, why would anyone buy more than one? and in the last century or so its low resistance and various other properties have become useful in the electricity and electronics industries. Jewels are useful (some of them) Mostly just diamonds, because they are so hard. Neither my wife nor I own any jewelry (except for wedding rings and am inexpensive necklace or two for my wife) and almost nothing made of gold to speak of (both our watches have a very small amount of golden decoration, but that's it). No precious gems at all. Your choice. To some people, jewellery is sufficiently pleasing they are willing to pay for it - like any other artwork. To others, it has the value they think they can sell it for in the future to those who _do_ like it. What has value to some people doesn't have the same value to everyone. No. But I don't see how cryptocurrency has value to _anyone_, _other_ than that it can be exchanged for other things - which doesn't to me explain how it gained value in the first place. -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf To keep leaf vegetables clean and crisp, cook lightly, then plunge into iced water (the vegetables, that is). - manual for a Russell Hobbs electric steamer |
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#17
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Maybe another reason your PC has slowed down
"Mayayana" on Thu, 7 Feb 2019 11:28:43 -0500
typed in alt.windows7.general the following: "Wolf K" wrote | I think you're asking the wrong question. Nothing "has value." More | precisely: "value" is not a property of some object. It's entirely | subjective. That makes sense, but the idea of currency is precisely that value is objectified. A dollar is worth a dollar. People can disagree about whether something is worth a dollar, but we all agree that a dollar has a specific value. Which is????? I'm recalling that eggs in Klondike were $10 (and those were 1895 dollars too). Each. Because gold they had, but not so many eggs. Too many "dollars" chasing too few goods leads to inflation. It happened in Spain with the Aztec treasures, it happened in Cairo when the Sultan of Timbuktu, on haj, spent gold with such a lavish hand that it depressed the price of gold for years. (Funny part of the story: he spent so much that when he came back through to Cairo, he had to borrow money for the rest of the trip home. "I'm good for it.") -- pyotr filipivich Next month's Panel: Graft - Boon or blessing? |
#18
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Maybe another reason your PC has slowed down
On Thu, 7 Feb 2019 22:45:37 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote: In message , Ken Blake writes: On Thu, 7 Feb 2019 15:36:37 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote: In message , Mayayana writes: [] Money is weird stuff, isn't it? Bitcoin is hard to make and limited in supply. In those respects it's a lot like gold. Why was gold worth money? Mostly because it's both limited and immutable. So a few people got rich mining it, but mostly it served as a stable, neutral medium of transaction. Jewels are similar. Yes, but gold and jewels have intrinsic uses as well: Some, but very few. gold doesn't corrode, is useful for making jewellery (which lasts, and it is easier to work than stainless steel), Yes, but to me, jewelry has no intrinsic value. Nor does much art. *All* art has intrinsic value (to me). However a lot of the stuff that is called "art" has no value at all; it's junk, not art. However, they are pleasing to some, and therefore some are willing to pay for them. Yes. However, the amount paid for bitcoins outweighs the artistic value, if any - plus, if that was the reason, why would anyone buy more than one? and in the last century or so its low resistance and various other properties have become useful in the electricity and electronics industries. Jewels are useful (some of them) Mostly just diamonds, because they are so hard. Neither my wife nor I own any jewelry (except for wedding rings and am inexpensive necklace or two for my wife) and almost nothing made of gold to speak of (both our watches have a very small amount of golden decoration, but that's it). No precious gems at all. Your choice. To some people, jewellery is sufficiently pleasing they are willing to pay for it - like any other artwork. Certainly. I wasn't talking about everyone--just me. To others, it has the value they think they can sell it for in the future to those who _do_ like it. Yes. Some people consider it an investment. Not me. What has value to some people doesn't have the same value to everyone. No. But I don't see how cryptocurrency has value to _anyone_, _other_ than that it can be exchanged for other things - which doesn't to me explain how it gained value in the first place. No comment from me about cryptocurrency. I know nothing about it. |
#19
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Maybe another reason your PC has slowed down
On Thu, 7 Feb 2019 22:37:24 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote: In message , Ken Blake writes: On Thu, 7 Feb 2019 10:45:36 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote: But what bugs me is: why do they even have that value? Just because something has cost someone $X to produce, why should it even be worth $X to anyone else? If it's a manufactured object, or piece of software in the widest sense (i. e. including literature, music, video, art, etc.), To change from one off-topic subject to another g, I've never seen any of those things referred to as "software" before, not even as "software in the widest sense." To me, none of those are software. Software, to me, is something that can't be touched; an arrangement of electronic bits that has some particular function. Others have explained why I used that term, Yes, and I understand their (and your) usage of the term. I'm not disagreeing with you (plural), just explaining the way *I* look at it. |
#20
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Maybe another reason your PC has slowed down
On 07/02/2019 22:45, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Ken Blake writes: On Thu, 7 Feb 2019 15:36:37 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote: In message , Mayayana writes: [] Â* Money is weird stuff, isn't it? Bitcoin is hard to make and limited in supply. In those respects it's a lot like gold. Why was gold worth money? Mostly because it's both limited and immutable. So a few people got rich mining it, but mostly it served as a stable, neutral medium of transaction. Jewels are similar. Yes, but gold and jewels have intrinsic uses as well: Some, but very few. gold doesn't corrode, is useful for making jewellery (which lasts, and it is easier to work than stainless steel), Yes, but to me, jewelry has no intrinsic value. Nor does much art. However, they are pleasing to some, and therefore some are willing to pay for them. However, the amount paid for bitcoins outweighs the artistic value, if any - plus, if that was the reason, why would anyone buy more than one? and in the last century or so its low resistance and various other properties have become useful in the electricity and electronics industries. Jewels are useful (some of them) Mostly just diamonds, because they are so hard. Neither my wife nor I own any jewelry (except for wedding rings and am inexpensiveÂ* necklace or two for my wife) and almost nothing made of gold to speak of (both our watches have a very small amount of golden decoration, but that's it). No precious gems at all. Your choice. To some people, jewellery is sufficiently pleasing they are willing to pay for it - like any other artwork. To others, it has the value they think they can sell it for in the future to those who _do_ like it. What has value to some people doesn't have the same value to everyone. No. But I don't see how cryptocurrency has value to _anyone_, _other_ than that it can be exchanged for other things - which doesn't to me explain how it gained value in the first place. You are asking *exactly* the same questions which I've often considered asking - but never have! Have a grand day, John. :-) -- David B. |
#21
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Maybe another reason your PC has slowed down
In message , David B. "David
writes: On 07/02/2019 22:45, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote: In message , Ken Blake writes: [] What has value to some people doesn't have the same value to everyone. No. But I don't see how cryptocurrency has value to _anyone_, _other_ than that it can be exchanged for other things - which doesn't to me explain how it gained value in the first place. You are asking *exactly* the same questions which I've often considered asking - but never have! And nobody is answering my fundamental question! Have a grand day, John. :-) Thanks - you too. -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf There I was, sitting in a glum mood - 'Cheer up, things could be worse', he said, so I cheered up, and sure enough, things got worse. |
#22
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Maybe another reason your PC has slowed down
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote
| No. But I don't see how cryptocurrency has value to _anyone_, | _other_ than that it can be exchanged for other things - which | doesn't to me explain how it gained value in the first place. | And nobody is answering my fundamental question! I thought lots of people were providing lots of answers and that your question was meant to be somewhat rhetorical. A check has no intrinsic value. I'ts just a small piece of paper. But a social and legal agreement makes it valuable. The same with dollar bills or pound notes. Why should cc be different? It gained value by 1) being severely limited in supply and 2) being associated with a social and legal agreement. Like paper currency and checks, it's a functional symbol of exchange. As is an ATM card, which is perhaps a better analogy, since the ATM card depends on software operations to express value, while paper currency holds its value as a concrete object. The success of cc will depend on increasing the social agreement of its being a medium of exchange, maintaining the limited supply, and establishing better security. On the other hand, as we blandly dive into excessive techo- dependence, it seems the day will come when all stored records of exchangeable value will be at risk, because there may no longer be material representations of exchange, like bills and coin. And probably exchange is a better word than value. You can only trade currency for goods or services if someone else will exchange with you. There's no objectively discernible value. Nothing has intrinsic value. That would imply the value is of the nature of the thing. But value is only in your personal assessment. Jeff Bezos saw no value in privacy a few months ago. Now he thinks it's quite valuable. He plans to spend millions in an effort to take down the people who invaded his privacy. We might all agree that a Rolls Royce has value. But it's not intrinsic. It's only valuable if you can drive it. Even then, it's only of value as transportation and as a symbol of swank.* It's of no value to an infant, and in the event of nuclear war or a solar flare that burns out all electronics, it would only be of value as a symbol of someone's misplaced priorities. Many people like to collect things -- art, wine, money, antiques, etc -- because they succeed in pretending to themselves that the collecting allows them to own "valuables". Within a limited context those thing do have value. You can sell your bottle of wine for a known sum. Yet there is no such thing as value in any objctive sense. People die and can't take their things with them. And while they live, their possessions are arguably only a source of anxiety and fear, because nothing in our experience can ever be confirmed in any objective sense. Including our own selves. Do we exist? That might seem like a silly question. Yet if you examine your habitual thinking you'll see that you spend every waking minute trying to establish and confirm your existence, by telling yourself who you are, replaying interactions with others, getting your bearings existentially, etc. If we actually existed would we be plagued by such doubts? And how could we ever possibly confirm such an objective truth? Of course you could try the juvenile logic of "I think therefore I am". But what thinks? All we can truly confirm is that cognition seems to be happening on its own. There seems to be some kind of knowing going on. Everything else is conceptual invention. If we were to be rigorously scientific it seems the best guess is that God exists and we're a manifestation of His Knowing. And his Knowing is what is. That's all we can truly observe. And what is this God? The very Knowing itself. (Which goes a long way in explaining the Big Bang.) But that's not scientifically provable, so we look through microscopes and try to find the first DNA, in hopes of knowing something for sure. Our feeling of success in owning stuff is pulling the wool over our own eyes and requires contant reassurance from others to keep the scam believable. * I like that word, though it's not really used in the US. There's an archaic usage of "swanky", but that's not heard much. (I use it a little because my parents used it. But it's no longer typical.) I once heard a story that Alan Watts, the Zen-ish philosopher, was coming through US customs with a very fancy cane and a customs official was suspicious, asking, "Hey, what's with the cane?" Watts was said to respond, defiantly, "It's for swank." |
#23
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Maybe another reason your PC has slowed down
In message , Mayayana
writes: "J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote | No. But I don't see how cryptocurrency has value to _anyone_, | _other_ than that it can be exchanged for other things - which | doesn't to me explain how it gained value in the first place. | And nobody is answering my fundamental question! I thought lots of people were providing lots of answers and that your question was meant to be somewhat rhetorical. No; genuine puzzlement about how CCs _get_ initial value/worth/whatever term you wish to use. A check has no intrinsic value. I'ts just a small piece of paper. But a social and legal agreement But cheques have different values (I'll use that word) depending on the figure written on them. A bitcoin is - apparently - worth the same as another bitcoin. Yes, a cheque is only a promise (or request to a bank), but as you say the social and legal agreement makes it valid. makes it valuable. The same with dollar bills or pound notes. Why should cc be different? It gained value by 1) being severely limited in supply and 2) being associated with a social and legal agreement. Like paper currency and checks, it's a functional symbol of exchange. As is I don't see it as equivalent. Anyone can make more bitcoins, so that is a difference from currency like dollars. And I don't see why the limited supply is it: I could pick up a pebble on the beach, and know there is no other quite like it - but it wouldn't be valuable. Scarcity _in itself_ is not a guarantee of value: there are lots of things that are scarce (or unique) that aren't; likewise difficulty in making. Something has to be scarce, and/or difficult to make, _and people want it_, for it to gain value. an ATM card, which is perhaps a better analogy, since the ATM card depends on software operations to express value, while paper currency holds its value as a concrete object. No, an ATM card has varying value depending on the balance of the account. It's (roughly) the modern equivalent of a key. The success of cc will depend on increasing the social agreement of its being a medium of exchange, maintaining the limited supply, and establishing better security. On the I would say that applies to, say, payment by credit card or bank transfer: those have (despite your concerns, which I share but not to the same extent) become accepted. But in that case, the transfer is of a number of pounds/dollars/whatever - units which have a value, established over history, and in most cases based on something tangible initially. My puzzlement is on how CCs gained value _in the first place_: the only answer I keep getting is that they're difficult to make. I don't see why that _of itself_ makes value: to me, something difficult to make only has value if someone, other than the maker, _wants_ it made, for some reason (such as an intricate machine part, or a piece of artwork). [] in any objective sense. Including our own selves. Do we exist? That might seem like a silly question. Yet if you examine your habitual thinking you'll see that you spend every waking minute trying to establish and confirm your existence, by telling I don't (-: yourself who you are, replaying interactions with others, getting your bearings existentially, etc. If we actually existed would we be plagued by such doubts? And how could we ever I'm not (-: possibly confirm such an objective truth? Of course you could try the juvenile logic of "I think therefore I am". But what thinks? All we can truly confirm is that cognition seems to be happening on its own. There seems to be some kind of knowing going on. Very existential! [] * I like that word, though it's not really used in the US. There's an archaic usage of "swanky", but that's not heard much. (I use it a little because my parents used it. But it's no longer typical.) Not much used here either, though the words (swank and swanky) are _understood_. Probably more used now is "bling" (which often carries the slightly negative connotation - critical of ostentatiousness - that swank did, though sometimes is just descriptive, like swanky was). I once heard a story that Alan Watts, the Zen-ish philosopher, was coming through US customs with a very fancy cane and a customs official was suspicious, asking, "Hey, what's with the cane?" Watts was said to respond, defiantly, "It's for swank." Sounds good. -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf User Error: Replace user, hit any key to continue. |
#24
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Maybe another reason your PC has slowed down
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote
| makes it valuable. The same with dollar bills or pound | notes. Why should cc be different? It gained value by | 1) being severely limited in supply and 2) being associated | with a social and legal agreement. Like paper currency | and checks, it's a functional symbol of exchange. As is | | I don't see it as equivalent. Anyone can make more bitcoins, so that is | a difference from currency like dollars. And I don't see why the limited | supply... As I understand it, a given cc has a limit in terms of how many can be produced overall. That's combined with the difficulty of producing them. | an ATM card, which is perhaps a better analogy, since | the ATM card depends on software operations to express | value, while paper currency holds its value as a concrete | object. | | No, an ATM card has varying value depending on the balance of the | account. It's (roughly) the modern equivalent of a key. It's an analogy in the sense of representing value abstractly. Money, ATM cards, checks and cc all represent exchangeable resources in an abstract way, with no value as objects. | My puzzlement is on how CCs gained value _in the first | place_: the only answer I keep getting is that they're difficult to | make. I don't see why that _of itself_ makes value: They're difficult to make AND there's an agreement, social and legal, about their representation of value. People have started cc systems. Others buy into it. I have a customer who bought 2 bitcoins early on. He holds onto them and dosn't care about the money. He just wants to support the idea. People like him give the cc credibility. There's no magic there. Like a pyramid scheme, all you need is to keep getting people who agree to play along. And like a pyramid scheme the main attraction, at this point, is hope of profit. There is a notable difference between that and national currency. The gov't backs dollars and pounds. A cc is more speculative. But other factors could give it stability. For example, as people use more credit cards our lives are becoming fully documented in terms of payments and purchases. That's creepy. Cc might become more relevant down the road as a new kind of cash that can be exchanged without personal info. Or, maybe it will all just collapse and people will be saying, "I can't believe I wasted all that money on algorythm cash. What was I thinking?" I expect the people who bought into the system of the man who just died are already thinking that. | Yet if you examine your | habitual thinking you'll see that you spend every waking minute | trying to establish and confirm your existence, by telling | | I don't (-: | You've just never noticed. Try sitting down for 20 minutes and just observe your outbreath. When you notice you're distracted by thinking, label it "thinking" in your mind and go back to watching. How long can you simply rest your awareness on the outbreath at will before you space out? What are the thoughts about? That's basic mindfulness/awareness meditation. It's a kind of open secret, hiding in plain sight. But the secret is not just that we can become more mindful, like they teach in yoga studios or corporate offices. That's only a very low-level secret, with very little value. You really begin to discover the levels of secrets when you see, experientially, that your reality is actually no more than a constant storytelling happening in your own mind. Then you discover what bliss is. The spacious, transparent lack of anxiety that comes from creating gaps in the storytelling. The unberable lightness of being. Yet that has no value, either. You can't win. |
#25
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Maybe another reason your PC has slowed down
On Fri, 8 Feb 2019 16:57:56 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote: In message , Mayayana writes: I once heard a story that Alan Watts, the Zen-ish philosopher, was coming through US customs with a very fancy cane and a customs official was suspicious, asking, "Hey, what's with the cane?" Watts was said to respond, defiantly, "It's for swank." Sounds good. In 2001 I returned to the US from a vacation in China, and came through customs with a fancy cane that I had bought there. The only reason I had bought it was that an itinerant vendor kept showing it to me and lowering his price. When he got down to about a dollar, I finally bought it just to get rid of him. I went through customs without a problem. About six months later, I showed it to my son, who immediately took it in his hands and withdrew the sword from it! How he knew there was a sword in it I don't know; I certainly didn't. But the good thing was that whatever he knew, the customs official didn't. |
#26
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Maybe another reason your PC has slowed down
In message , Mayayana
writes: [] As I understand it, a given cc has a limit in terms of how many can be produced overall. That's combined with the difficulty of producing them. Ah, I wasn't aware of that. (Though I still don't see why that gives them any initial value - though it may well increase the tendency.) [] It's an analogy in the sense of representing value abstractly. Money, ATM cards, checks and cc all represent exchangeable resources in an abstract way, with no value as objects. Yes, but money, ATM cards, and cheques all represent access to a known amount of some currency. CCs only represent access to CCs. | My puzzlement is on how CCs gained value _in the first | place_: the only answer I keep getting is that they're difficult to | make. I don't see why that _of itself_ makes value: They're difficult to make AND there's an agreement, social and legal, about their representation of value. People have started cc systems. Others buy into it. That can't be the whole story though. If their initial creation is of a certain number, and as you suggest above there's a maximum number, then those should produce upper and lower limits of their value - if the initial creation was based on a figure in some other currency, that is. There would be some fluctuation because of people's perception of the cost of transactions, but that's all. Let's say I invent JPGcoins, initially 100,000 of them, with an upper possible limit of 200,000 including extra ones that can be "mined", based on my putting up $1m in the first place. Therefore, one JPGcoin ought to be worth between $10 and $5 - or slightly less, because it costs something to do transactions with them. How do they go up in value? If I _don't_ put up any money to start with, just the electricity needed to generate them, why would anyone ever buy them in the first place? I have a customer who bought 2 bitcoins early on. He holds onto them and dosn't care about the money. He just wants to support the idea. People like him give the cc credibility. There's no magic That's like people who buy limited-edition "coins", plates, or whatever. Most of those _don't_ prove to be an investment, a few do. But it seems very sad to buy something like a bitcoin in that way: at least with a coin/medal, plate, stamp, limited run artwork, or something, you've got a physical object you can enjoy in the meantime. there. Like a pyramid scheme, all you need is to keep getting people who agree to play along. And like a pyramid scheme the main attraction, at this point, is hope of profit. Pyramid schemes are illegal, though, aren't they? I think they are in most jurisdictions, including US and UK. There is a notable difference between that and national currency. The gov't backs dollars and pounds. A cc is more speculative. But other factors could give it stability. For example, as people use more credit cards our lives are becoming fully documented in terms of payments and purchases. That's creepy. Cc might become more relevant down the road as a new kind of cash that can be exchanged without personal info. I can see the attraction. Just not the initial (or mining) basis. Or, maybe it will all just collapse and people will be saying, "I can't believe I wasted all that money on algorythm cash. What was I thinking?" I expect the people who bought into the system of the man who just died are already thinking that. (-: | Yet if you examine your | habitual thinking you'll see that you spend every waking minute | trying to establish and confirm your existence, by telling | | I don't (-: | You've just never noticed. Try sitting down for 20 minutes and just observe your outbreath. When you Om? notice you're distracted by thinking, label it "thinking" in your mind and go back to watching. How long can you simply rest your awareness on the outbreath at will before you space out? What are the thoughts about? Mine certainly aren't "trying to establish and confirm my existence". I'd almost certainly get _bored_ doing the sort of meditation you describe - but, I don't think my thoughts would be the above. (Unless you're going to use a religion-type argument that _all_ thoughts are of that nature, in which case I'm stopping this branch now.) That's basic mindfulness/awareness meditation. It's a kind of open secret, hiding in plain sight. But the secret is not just that we can become more mindful, like they teach in yoga studios or corporate offices. That's only a very low-level secret, with very little value. You really begin to discover the levels of secrets when you see, experientially, that your reality is actually no more than a constant storytelling happening in your own mind. Then you discover what bliss is. The spacious, transparent lack of anxiety that comes from creating gaps in the storytelling. The unberable lightness of being. Yet that has no value, either. You can't win. Certainly that sort of warbling has no value to me. (I've never tried mind-enhancing chemicals, and probably am unlikely to do so now.) -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf "The wish of the lazy to allow unsupervised access [to the internet] to their children should not reduce all adults browsing to the level of suitability for a five-year-old." Yaman Akdeniz, quoted in Inter//face (The Times, 1999-2-10): p12 |
#27
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Maybe another reason your PC has slowed down
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote
| Yes, but money, ATM cards, and cheques all represent access to a known | amount of some currency. CCs only represent access to CCs. ?? Look up bitcoin value. You can buy, sell, or find the current price. I could only find one site that wasn't completely broken without javascript: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/ Current value: About $3,670. They also have a little blurb that describes bitcoin as "peer to peer". They make it sound almost like a closed bartering system. But it seems that buying and selling is not quite so easy as cashing a check. | That can't be the whole story though. If their initial creation is of a | certain number, and as you suggest above there's a maximum number, then | those should produce upper and lower limits of their value - if the | initial creation was based on a figure in some other currency, that is. | There would be some fluctuation because of people's perception of the | cost of transactions, but that's all. | | Let's say I invent JPGcoins, initially 100,000 of them, with an upper | possible limit of 200,000 including extra ones that can be "mined", | based on my putting up $1m in the first place. Therefore, one JPGcoin | ought to be worth between $10 and $5 - or slightly less, because it | costs something to do transactions with them. How do they go up in | value? If I _don't_ put up any money to start with, just the electricity | needed to generate them, why would anyone ever buy them in the first | place? Once there's stability in the status as currency they can be worth anything, just like stocks. Or cash in Venezuela. You keep wanting to tie it to some absolute value. There is no absolute value. It's a medium of exchange. It works because people agree to use it. I've seen bartering systems that work like that. A community decides to institutionalize bartering and creates a kind of currency that works by maintaining records. X does housecleaning for Y and gains 1 hour creidt to use toward, say, getting their taxes done. That's a very real currency, even though it's entirely unofficial. Though it's pretty dumb. They have to pay taxes on it because they don't trust each other enough to do it on a casual basis. That's an interesting side topic: How do we decide how much tax people should pay? People make and need different amounts of money. And income tax, oddly, depends on alienation. If I'm friends with you and we trade housecleaning for accounting, it costs us both nothing. If you invite me to dinner and I fix your sink drain, that's certainly not a business transaction. So where do we draw the line? We draw it at an entirely arbitrary point of alienation: If we don't trust and know each other then we use an official form of exchange and that's taxed. | | I have a customer | who bought 2 bitcoins early on. He holds onto them and | dosn't care about the money. He just wants to support the | idea. People like him give the cc credibility. There's no magic | | That's like people who buy limited-edition "coins", plates, or whatever. | Most of those _don't_ prove to be an investment, a few do. But it seems | very sad to buy something like a bitcoin in that way: at least with a | coin/medal, plate, stamp, limited run artwork, or something, you've got | a physical object you can enjoy in the meantime. | He's a technophile. One of these odd people who think tech is going to usher in a golden age of love, light and equality. | Pyramid schemes are illegal, though, aren't they? I think they are in | most jurisdictions, including US and UK. Yes, in the US. | | Yet if you examine your | | habitual thinking you'll see that you spend every waking minute | | trying to establish and confirm your existence, by telling | | | | I don't (-: | | | | You've just never noticed. Try sitting down for | 20 minutes and just observe your outbreath. When you | | Om? There ya go. | | notice you're distracted by thinking, label it "thinking" | in your mind and go back to watching. How long can | you simply rest your awareness on the outbreath at | will before you space out? What are the thoughts about? | | Mine certainly aren't "trying to establish and confirm my existence". | I'd almost certainly get _bored_ doing the sort of meditation you | describe Yes. Because you'd be starved for 20 minutes of self- confirming thoughts. We never, for even a minute, stop. And we go batty if we try. | - but, I don't think my thoughts would be the above. (Unless | you're going to use a religion-type argument that _all_ thoughts are of | that nature, in which case I'm stopping this branch now.) What other nature can there be? I'm hungry. I'm full. I'm horny. I'm bored. I itch. Scratch. Good. That guy was a jerk. I hope he suffers. That woman was gorgeous. I hope I see her again. I need to buy cat food. I'm hungry.... Bye bye. | | That's basic mindfulness/awareness meditation. It's | a kind of open secret, hiding in plain sight. But the secret | is not just that we can become more mindful, like they | teach in yoga studios or corporate offices. That's only | a very low-level secret, with very little value. You really | begin to discover the levels of secrets when you see, | experientially, that your reality is actually no more than | a constant storytelling happening in your own mind. Then | you discover what bliss is. The spacious, transparent lack | of anxiety that comes from creating gaps in the storytelling. | The unberable lightness of being. Yet that has no value, | either. You can't win. | | Certainly that sort of warbling has no value to me. OK. It's just that once we start talking about things like value and why someone might collect objects, it quickly moves from one meta-context to the next. With questions like that you have to define the context of the answer. But I'm happy to leave it at that. I don't intend to buy either antiques or bitcoins, and I don't generally dally with such frippery as "value". |
#28
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Maybe another reason your PC has slowed down
In message , Mayayana
writes: "J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote | Yes, but money, ATM cards, and cheques all represent access to a known | amount of some currency. CCs only represent access to CCs. ?? Look up bitcoin value. You can buy, sell, or find the current price. I could only find one site that wasn't I'm not denying that they have value (or price, or whatever word). I just don't understand how they got it in the first place. [] Once there's stability in the status as currency they can Yes; once again, I accept that they have (some) stability. Once again, I don't see how that came about. [] I've seen bartering systems that work like that. A community decides to institutionalize bartering and creates a kind of currency that works by maintaining records. X does housecleaning for Y and gains 1 hour creidt to use toward, Yes: X _did something Y wanted_, and got paid for it - or given something that was/is a promise of future pay. Bartering systems might be proposed - the Anytown pound, or the Smallville dollar - but they don't really get off the ground until somebody does a real job for someone else. say, getting their taxes done. That's a very real currency, even though it's entirely unofficial. Though it's pretty dumb. They have to pay taxes on it because they don't trust each other enough to do it on a casual basis. Yes, all of those are credit for things people _want_ done. What I don't _get_ is why anyone should _want_ someone else to spend electricity to make a cryptocurrency in the first place. In the barter scheme you describe, barter units are not conjured up out of thin air: they're created in return for labour expended on tasks people want done. [religion/metaphysics snipped] But I'm happy to leave it at that. I don't intend to buy either antiques or bitcoins, and I don't generally dally with such frippery as "value". On the whole, me neither. I might buy antiques, but if I did so, it would mainly be because I find them pleasant objects to have or use, rather than as an investment. I certainly have no intention of buying any cryptocurrency, since I don't - often, anyway - put money into things I don't understand at least the basics of, and I don't in this case. -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf Lebanon is smaller than Wales but they have taken on one million refugees and they don't talk about it as much as we seem to here in this country. - Hassan Akkad, RT 2017/10/28-2017/11/3 |
#29
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Maybe another reason your PC has slowed down
In message , Wolf K
writes: On 2019-02-08 19:19, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote: In message , Mayayana writes: "J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote | Yes, but money, ATM cards, and cheques all represent access to a known | amount of some currency. CCs only represent access to CCs. ?? Look up bitcoin value. You can buy, sell, or find the current price. I could only find one site that wasn't I'm not denying that they have value (or price, or whatever word). I just don't understand how they got it in the first place. [...] The same way a silver sixpence (remember those?) does: by being accepted as a "medium of exchange." You're begging the question: HOW did they come to be accepted as a "medium of exchange"? (All coins and notes is a bit of a red herring. Those became such because the government of the day said they were legal tender, which means they had to be accepted in payment of a debt - as representing part of the state currency, which was originally tied to something else. CCs are not.) -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf Play dirty. If a fellow contestant asks the audience if they've got any requests for what he or she should play, reply, "Yeah... Monopoly." |
#30
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OT: Cryptocurrencies (was: Maybe another reason your PC has slowed down)
I have the feeling that you _might_ just be continuing this discussion
as a wind-up, and that we're both in agreement really, but I'll continue for one or two more exchanges! I _do_ understand the differences between value, worth, price, and so on; and I also understand the concept of tokens. In message , Wolf K writes: On 2019-02-08 20:41, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote: In message , Wolf K writes: On 2019-02-08 19:19, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote: [] *I'm not denying that they have value (or price, or whatever word). I just don't understand how they got it in the first place. [] The same way a silver sixpence (remember those?) does: by being accepted as a "medium of exchange." You're begging the question: HOW did they come to be accepted as a "medium of exchange"? (All coins and notes is a bit of a red herring. [] Ah, now you're asking about history and psychology. Anyhow, state- I'm not asking about history. backed/regulated money is not a given. It's come and gone several times in the 6,000-odd years of civilisation. History first: It's murky and gappy. AFAIK, the earliest evidence of using some kind of token in trading is found in the Fertile Crescent. Apparently, trade contracts were recorded on clay seals, which were broken in half to mark the start of the trade, and were recombined days or weeks later to complete the trade. Having the matching half of the Yes, but those tablets represented a contract for something tangible (or possibly were a very early version of "futures trading", which is a bit of a gamble, but still can _eventually_ be traced to something real). seal meant you had a right to the commodity specified. Trading the seal-fragments themselves was a conceptual leap, but once made, it could not be unmade. How this developed into money as we know it today is not fully understood, but several stages are clearly marked, eg, letters of credit became negotiable in the late Middle Ages, and this eventually led to paper money in the West. Indeed. I get how money started (more or less as you say - bit like the passes that were killed for in the film Casablanca). [] cars and dollies and such. Magic! But the coins were real material objects, so you came to believe that money is stuff, that it's just Yes, perhaps, for a short time as a child, but I soon learnt the concept of the token. [] Since people tend to believe that money is stuff, it's easy for some of It _represents_ "stuff". At rates that vary, granted. them to believe that cryptocurrency is stuff, too. Hence the market in Yes, many CCs now _are_ accepted as tokens (though more often used to be exchanged for other currencies than actual goods or services, but that's just a matter of degree). It's how that _started_ - and continues to start if new ones are invented - that's a bit obscure. (That and "mining" new individual ones of existing CCs.) Bitcoin. AIUI, Bitcoin began as a proof-of-concept for creating a currency that would be cheat-proof. But please note: Bitcoin did not become negotiable until some vendors decided to accept it like any other currency. Why did they do this? Mostly, I think, because the transaction trail for Bitcoin is anonymous. The transaction trail for gold is not (generally speaking). It was drug traders and money launderers that first took up cryptocurrency. Money laundering is a I suppose it was a gamble on the part of launderers/traffickers. I guess they have so much money that they could afford such a gamble, if it gave them anonymity/secrecy. difficult trick to pull off, since it requires secrecy all along the line. Tthe breakthrough into "real money" came when restaurants etc began to accept Bitcoin. I think that came some way down the line, though; it had to be seen to have worth/value. And, again, it was a bit of a gamble, by restaurants (etc.) who wanted to appear "trendy". Best, -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf If mankind minus one were of one opinion, then mankind is no more justified in silencing the one than the one - if he had the power - would be justified in silencing mankind. -John Stuart Mill, philosopher and economist (1806-1873) |
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