Okay, I love your article; however, I might be missing something, so please correct me.
“no international trade is denominated in Bitcoin”... except for illegal online dark markets, right? People buy it to speculate, but how much spending in crypto is in these markets? (I have no idea, and finding any such data is hard).
If you get the item the next day, which I know is a thing now, at least in Canada, because we are overwhelmed (google Toronto Life Jeff Bezos of the international drug trade), doesn't that eliminate the yearly price fluctuation risk? As long as people are using it for such transactions (even though you can trace everything in the ledger and the government is extremely good at tracking wallets), it won’t be trading at 0.
I have no idea how to value it. But it’s not 0 if it’s the only way these people transact. I am interested in your thoughts here. What am I missing?
You are very busy, and the work you do is important. I love your articles. Thanks again.
Paraphrased from Bitcoin is Venice, with some of my own words added:
Ludwig Wittgenstein once asked a friend “Tell me, why do people say it is more natural to think that the sun rotates around the Earth than that the Earth is rotating?”
The friend said, “Well, obviously, because it just seems like the sun is going around the Earth.”
Wittgenstein replied, “Well, what would seem like if it did seem like the Earth was rotating?”
It doesn’t seem like bitcoin is money, yet. I can’t use it to pay for groceries, and its value wildly fluctuates up and down. I can’t put it in a safe, or deposit it into my bank account.
But what would it seem like if it seemed like a global, digital, sound, open, programmable money was monetizing from absolute zero?
Maybe…
It would seem like a promise of superior certainty in the future, with an admission of increased uncertainty in the present.
It would seem like as much an exciting and dangerous narrative and experiment as a provable guarantee.
It would seem like widely disparate views, rapid change, and no consensus, with sentiment ebbing and flowing unpredictably as the merits of the promise of the future certainty from the challenger and the supposed failures of this promise from the incumbent were constantly being weighed and re-weighed by the market.
It would seem like superficially extreme uncertainty masking such a substantial improvement in the promise of protection from dilution that the nuisance of the uncertainty of period of emergence could credibly claim to be outweighed.
If it did seem like a global, digital, sound, free, open-source, programmable money was monetizing from absolute zero, it would probably seem a lot like bitcoin seems today.
Just because at present it seems like bitcoin is volatile in dollar terms (sun rotating around the Earth), doesn't mean that in the future we can't or won't come to understand that it was the dollars that were volatile in bitcoin terms (Earth rotating around the sun).
Okay, I love your article; however, I might be missing something, so please correct me.
“no international trade is denominated in Bitcoin”... except for illegal online dark markets, right? People buy it to speculate, but how much spending in crypto is in these markets? (I have no idea, and finding any such data is hard).
If you get the item the next day, which I know is a thing now, at least in Canada, because we are overwhelmed (google Toronto Life Jeff Bezos of the international drug trade), doesn't that eliminate the yearly price fluctuation risk? As long as people are using it for such transactions (even though you can trace everything in the ledger and the government is extremely good at tracking wallets), it won’t be trading at 0.
I have no idea how to value it. But it’s not 0 if it’s the only way these people transact. I am interested in your thoughts here. What am I missing?
You are very busy, and the work you do is important. I love your articles. Thanks again.
https://torontolife.com/city/this-man-is-the-jeff-bezos-of-the-international-drug-trade/
Paraphrased from Bitcoin is Venice, with some of my own words added:
Ludwig Wittgenstein once asked a friend “Tell me, why do people say it is more natural to think that the sun rotates around the Earth than that the Earth is rotating?”
The friend said, “Well, obviously, because it just seems like the sun is going around the Earth.”
Wittgenstein replied, “Well, what would seem like if it did seem like the Earth was rotating?”
It doesn’t seem like bitcoin is money, yet. I can’t use it to pay for groceries, and its value wildly fluctuates up and down. I can’t put it in a safe, or deposit it into my bank account.
But what would it seem like if it seemed like a global, digital, sound, open, programmable money was monetizing from absolute zero?
Maybe…
It would seem like a promise of superior certainty in the future, with an admission of increased uncertainty in the present.
It would seem like as much an exciting and dangerous narrative and experiment as a provable guarantee.
It would seem like widely disparate views, rapid change, and no consensus, with sentiment ebbing and flowing unpredictably as the merits of the promise of the future certainty from the challenger and the supposed failures of this promise from the incumbent were constantly being weighed and re-weighed by the market.
It would seem like superficially extreme uncertainty masking such a substantial improvement in the promise of protection from dilution that the nuisance of the uncertainty of period of emergence could credibly claim to be outweighed.
If it did seem like a global, digital, sound, free, open-source, programmable money was monetizing from absolute zero, it would probably seem a lot like bitcoin seems today.
Just because at present it seems like bitcoin is volatile in dollar terms (sun rotating around the Earth), doesn't mean that in the future we can't or won't come to understand that it was the dollars that were volatile in bitcoin terms (Earth rotating around the sun).