EU reaches agreement on ‘landmark’ crypto rules

jigsaw said:
All we are missing in this thread is Duke
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I'm licking my wounds. Truly depressing how the BOHA has more than doubled in the last not so long. I will comment that BTC is way off target to be a currency, that space craft has more chance of reaching the moon. The ultimate destiny of price stability, forecast by @tecate, is as far away as ever. All this ETF baloney just emphasises that bitcoin has become almost entirely a speculative bauble. It can't survive on that forever, but sadly much longer than I thought. I mean is there even such thing as a dollar ETF.
I googled Professor Roubini to get a lift out of my depression with some wholesome doom talk. What do I find? He has taken the soup :mad: Please someone tell me that "it isn't so".
 
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Duke of Marmalade said:
All this ETF baloney just emphasises that bitcoin has become almost entirely a speculative bauble. It can't survive on that forever, but sadly much longer than I thought. I mean is there even such thing as a dollar ETF.
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I don't know about a dollar ETF but once upon a time (within recent history, before the fiat experiment), the dollar was backed by gold. Here's the gold price over the past 30 odd years or so. The first gold ETF hit the scene in the US in 2004.

historical_gold_price.png


Duke of Marmalade said:
I googled Professor Roubini to get a lift out of my depression with some wholesome doom talk. What do I find? He has taken the soup :mad: Please someone tell me that "it isn't so".
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It's true - he's working for some blockchain or crypto project or other. Didn't you say that you'd drink the soup when he did?
 
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Duke of Marmalade said:
All this ETF baloney just emphasises that bitcoin has become almost entirely a speculative bauble. It can't survive on that forever, but sadly much longer than I thought.
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Why not? There seems to be plenty of public demand for a roller coaster priced asset. Most bubbles get popped because it becomes clear that the fundamentals aren't there, but Bitcoin has so many narratives around it, it seems to be complex enough to pop/prove it has no intrinsic value. What is clear, if you look at e.g. 12 month trailing returns of Bitcoin over time, is that they are oscillating in a narrower and narrower envelope, if that long term trend continues then future returns seem very unlikely to be as big in the past.
 
RonnieShinbal88 said:
if that long term trend continues then future returns seem very unlikely to be as big in the past.
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Like gold, bitcoin is not an income generating asset. The outsized gains are only on the cards as a function of its coming of age. Nothing more.
 
RonnieShinbal88 said:
Most bubbles get popped because it becomes clear that the fundamentals aren't there, but Bitcoin has so many narratives around it, it seems to be complex enough to pop/prove it has no intrinsic value.
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Good point. The paradox of bitcoin is that there is no way at all of determining its price. Therefore in its short history it has taken prices ranging from 5,000 btc to 1 pizza to $67,000 each. Today, analysts range in their assessment of its potential value as between zero and, I think I have seen several million dollars. Most people know that there is nothing behind it, although I think some people are conned by this mining for digital gold nonsense. So how do you ever expose what most people know - bitcoin is a Bag Of Hot Air? Reminds me of Donald Trump. You might think that he will end up as toast when people discover that he is a crook, a misogynist, a racist and an insurrectionist. But wait, everybody knows that already.
So, except for the cultists who I think are in fact a tiny minority, most people are into bitcoin purely for speculative purposes. But the speculation is not that there are vast riches in the South Seas, that was quickly exposed. The speculation is that people will pay more than you in future for the BOHA, you have no other use for it. Can that game last forever? What will blow it up? Answers on a blockchain please.
 
jigsaw said:
This post is not going to age well :)
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Its aging quite beautifully I think

BTC you should check.......is still......down what?

37% in nominal terms and 47% in real terms (10% cumulative USD domestic price inflation over the period 2022-2023) from it's $69k all time high

V poor, v poor indeed
 
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letitroll said:
Its aging quite beautifully I think

BTC you should check.......is still......down what?

37% in nominal terms and 47% in real terms (10% cumulative USD domestic price inflation over the period 2022-2023) from it's $69k all time high

V poor, v poor indeed
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You stated BTC will never hit it's ATH again.

Care to wager a bet on that?

Nothing too big, let's say a grand?

We can do it in public here for everyone to see and use a 3rd party for escrow.

You in?
 
DazedInPontoon said:
Which office would that be?
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The one with everyboyds names, addresses, copies of government issued ID's, social security numbers and PPS numbers + all the transaction records of everything those same people have done on the platform........then also of course the physical location where Coinbase is gonna cold storage all the BTC ETF coins they are now gonna be the custodian off....which as I've indicated will turn out, over time, to be by volume the majority of the worlds BTC....on-shore, held by US regulated/domiciled entities.

It will probably look like this cold storage fault in Switzerland - the difference....

1705185419382.png


it will all be in the United States of America baby......and you'll be 'free' to holds those bad boy coins as much as your 'free' to hold dollars.......until such a time when the FBI/CIA/NSA/DOJ/OFAC/Treasury/Interpol shows up at the door with a piece of paper.......and Coinbase will swing those doors open and let em at whatever they want.

Alll very centralized & neutered.....with about the same level of permissionlessness you currently have with your checking or current account.....with just with about 10x the fees attached for the service.

What do they say, freedom isn't free.....imaginary freedom certainly isn't.....just given the predatory fees scalped off the top in this space....7% to buy $51 of Bitcoin on Coinbase....its an amazing business model.
 
If we leave the relish with which @letitroll wants that to play out as he's described aside, he's raised a very interesting topic and a discussion very much worth having. To anyone who is interested in what he's raised (whether willing it to happen or willing it not to happen!), the consideration of this threat is nothing new - and I'd encourage you to listen to what Andreas Antonopolous had to say on the subject five years ago already.

Before we go any further though, one item. If @letitroll is 95% certain that this happens as he described, then that means that US-based ETFs will have been wildly successful. 30% of BTC hasn't moved in over five years. The majority of BTC supply hasn't moved in over one year. BlackRock has to go out onto the market, dealing with that illiquidity (at that level/scale) and hoover up BTC. His wager with me on BTC never reaching ATH price again is toast at that point - if he's right about the success of US spot Bitcoin ETFs. :)

Now back to the potential nation-state attack. I agree with @letitroll that there's certainly a strong potential for such an attack vector. Antonopolous is of that opinion. But the difference is in the interpretation of what any such split would look like. A corporate Bitcoin will not be Bitcoin. @letitroll believes that the other fork will be the poor relation. I disagree. A centralized holding of BTC can definitely cause governance issues but like Antonopolous said five years ago already, bitcoin will continue. It's not a show stopper.

The development of Bitcoin from foundation to this point has always been a balancing act. If it was centralized, it would have been killed stone dead within a year or two. It has the ability to benefit from jurisdictional arbitrage. It has already benefitted from that - and it will continue to do so.

I've always said that an ETF would bring in a new set of challenges - but there's upside too. Bitcoin will be brought once again to a new audience. It will become more and more acceptable for it to be used for various use cases. It just needs to keep seeping in around the edges. Here's a recent example.


Its an interesting topic - and there are lots and lots of what ifs in all of it. It will be interesting to see it unfold.
 
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tecate said:
Here's a recent example.
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This is how a cultist wets themselves on this "ground breaking" development:
bitcoin cultist said:
The terms of the agreement signify a departure from traditional transactions, as the tenant is obligated to pay the equivalent of $100 USDT in Bitcoin to the landlord each month.
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I'll leave it to listeners to decide whether this is a US $ contract or a BTC contract.
Notably, Fiwind, a national cryptocurrency exchange, has been selected as the reference point for determining the bitcoin price for these transactions. The agreement outlines that the tenant must execute these payments within the initial five days of each month, directing them to an address provided by the landlord.
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I guess that answers the above musing.

This shift towards Bitcoin settlements not only signifies a technological leap but also reflects a response to economic challenges faced by Argentina. The use of a decentralized digital currency allows parties involved in the lease agreement to sidestep the volatility and depreciation associated with the national fiat currency.
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Messie et al would just love to deal directly in US $ but that seems to be verbotten. But the new law seems to allow a way around that ban if you arrange that the actual transaction is in btc although the commercial reality is a US $ one. Well yes, let the cultists add it to their list of use cases.

As the world watches Argentina’s pioneering move, questions arise about the broader implications and potential ripple effects in the global real estate and cryptocurrency landscape. Could this signal a growing trend where countries, facing economic uncertainties, turn to cryptocurrencies for stability in real estate transactions?
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Gee! Could bitcoin be the solution to our homelessness problem?

The global implications of this move cannot be understated.
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The cultists are certainly finding that difficult.
It places Argentina in the spotlight as a nation willing to embrace innovative financial solutions, potentially influencing other countries grappling with economic challenges to explore similar paths. While the legal status of this executive order remains uncertain, its impact is undeniable, sparking conversations about the intersection of traditional legal frameworks and the evolving landscape of digital currencies.
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It would be great to be a fly on the wall listening to the conversations at a bitcoin cult meeting.
 
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God damn Duke! I mentioned that in passing - wasn't expecting it to turn your brain into mush! lol

That the Argentinian government has declared that they're good with contracts being denominated in Bitcoin or settled in Bitcoin is significant. I couldn't give a fiddlers about what unit of account is used - as discussed many times previously. It continues to embed itself, through a whole host of such decisions. That's been the ongoing trend since you turned your nose up at it way back when it was what price?
 
tecate said:
That the Argentinian government has declared that they're good with contracts being denominated in Bitcoin or settled in Bitcoin is significant.
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I understand that it is "difficult to understate its significance". I guess your including it in a "whole host of such decisions" does achieve that difficult task.
 
Think my post about the very likely bifurcation of BTC into onshore US blessed and offshore BTC... has gone wollop due moderation infraction - for which I apologies - @Brendan Burgess @admin curious if it could be pulled back minus the offending sentence or two? Curious what sentence was the offending one also - but ultimately no offense intended as always
 
@tecate More seriously, am I right that it is in effect a way round doing what is essentially a US$ contract?
I see that you agree that @letitroll has a point about US Gov capture of bitcoin. I myself am not close enough to the issues to fully understand his arguments, I must read your link to Andropolous who is the main source of the limited technical grasp that I have.
What I do think is that the vast, vast majority of bitcoin holders don't give a fiddlers about decentralisation, lack of censorship etc. etc They are simply speculating. So what if at some future date the Feds raid the party, they will have made their fortune and got out by then.
 
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