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He maybe is the world's richest man? On the podcast he was asked about investing in Crypto and, almost matter of factly, said not to go near them. 1 week later they've crashed, he's got the markets in his hand! Hopefully he shorted on them and gave Les and Lee the tip too so we've got oodles of cash to burn on transfers again!!
Edit Russian Bot on the other hand may be looking for a hand out...
Now think of a number and double it. There are third wo...er, emerging nations with greater reserves. Hopefully, we'll have kicked the bucket before the shite hits the fan.
[Post edited 21 May 2021 1:15]
310 tonnes of gold are worth around 15 billion pounds
We need to get back to the good old days when wealth was measured in something you could actually live off, namely cattle. So far I've got a couple of steaks in the freezer and several pints of milk in the fridge, I'm hoping to have assembled an entire cow before I hit 65.
the currency of..............................cheese!
2 bries to the mature cheddar.
the only strings involved in the technology will be cheese strings, which, alas, are illegal tender in Britain.
Volatility is a problem but, in whose interests would it be to instigate such? Bitcoin and the hundreds of other crypto currencies currently in existence, are driven by those uncomfortable with the way governments / The Fed , manipulate money. The possibility of those with nefarious reasons to use it for shady deals is inevitable, fraud exists everywhere.
Elon Musk for starters. He’s blatantly manipulating the market for his own personal gain. And for people like Elon Musk and hedge funds to make big money, you need big losers (I.e. the uninitiated speculators).
It's all imaginary anyway and based on what we perceive to be valuable to gauge against.
Gold is considered valuable due to it's rarity compared to, for example, water. Yet, IMO, water is more valuable because without it we couldn't survive but we can survive without gold.
It's all imaginary anyway and based on what we perceive to be valuable to gauge against.
Gold is considered valuable due to it's rarity compared to, for example, water. Yet, IMO, water is more valuable because without it we couldn't survive but we can survive without gold.
Every time a financial transaction happens, it is written down in a ledger. Some money gets added to one account and subtracted from another. In the normal world, a centralised institution like a bank writes the ledger and makes sure the money doesn’t end up in two places at once. In the crypto world, Satoshi Nakamoto devised a system to safely log a transaction on a distributed ledger shared across a network with no single centralised institution in control.
To make this work without anyone cheating: - A transaction happens and a competition is announced. - Computers on the network do a Piece of Work (completing a mathematical task). - The computer that gets the answer first wins the right to write the transaction in the ledger (add the block to the chain). - As a reward the winner receives some cryptocurrency, which is created from nothing specifically for the purpose (mining). - The difficulty of the Piece of Work is altered automatically to control how much new cryptocurrency is created.
The problem is that the Piece of Work acts as a handbrake: - Whoever wins the competition has to spend A LOT of energy on processing power to win the competition. - Whoever doesn’t win the competition HAS ALSO spent a lot of energy on processing power. - The more valuable the reward of currency is (if for example bitcoin has gone up and up), the more people will compete to win it, and so the more the winner will have to spend on energy to win, and, of course, the more energy will have been wasted by those who don’t win. - The more transactions there are, the more such competitions will occur.
So more valuable the currency becomes and the more it is used, the more energetically expensive it becomes. But you can't remove this handbrake because then someone might be able to cheat and double spend.
People argue about the exact numbers, but in 2018 bitcoin used <25% of the energy of the entire banking system. In 2021 it used almost 50%. This is about the same energy as a mid-sized European country. These are numbers from people promoting crypto. But bitcoin only does a tiny fraction of what banking does. There are hundreds of thousands more 'normal' transactions than crypto transactions each day. If it was ever to become more significant, if it was to approach even 10% of what banking does, the energy consumption would be astronomical! Right now, remember, it's still almost impossible to buy anything with it.
Bitcoin and other currencies are massively energy expensive compared to their usefulness, and this will only get worse if they’re used more. They have a handbrake that cannot be removed that makes them totally impractical at any scale. Decentralised digital currencies have incredible potential, but this potential cannot be released until someone invents another protocol that keeps them legit but doesn’t cost the earth.
Until then, this incredible rise in price we have seen, despite current falls, is based on hype not potential growth, because structurally bitcoin and similar cannot really sensibly become much more prevalent than they are today, at least if as a planet we have any intention of trying to meet carbon emission targets.
That has given me a headache and I need to lie down in a dark room
There are some things my brain simply does not get
On a side note Holborn Abbey National is closing in june/july and the nearest branch when I asked the nice young lady in there is...Islington or TCR.
I can't do stuff online, I keep forgetting the 3 security answers. What about if I need to do a transfer? Is this some con to hasten the end of cash?
Just curious. Or are people genuinely not using branches?
It's heading that way and on the rare occasion I have had to go in to a bank or building society it tends only to be business customers paying in their cash or the older generation who are paying their quarterly BT bill by cheque with a tear off paying in slip.
My mum who is 78 will still pay all her utility bills by cheque and paying in slip by walking down to HSBC - does not trust DD's where as everything I pay for regularly is on a DD.
It's heading that way and on the rare occasion I have had to go in to a bank or building society it tends only to be business customers paying in their cash or the older generation who are paying their quarterly BT bill by cheque with a tear off paying in slip.
My mum who is 78 will still pay all her utility bills by cheque and paying in slip by walking down to HSBC - does not trust DD's where as everything I pay for regularly is on a DD.
I guess being a Xenial (apart from forgetting passwords) I still don't fully trust having everything online.
I'll just have to get used to it by the sounds of it.
Maybe there is a niche for a bank with branches and real people. How much do I need to start up a bank?
Beer and Beef has made us what we are - The Prince Regent
Elon Musk for starters. He’s blatantly manipulating the market for his own personal gain. And for people like Elon Musk and hedge funds to make big money, you need big losers (I.e. the uninitiated speculators).
Yeah that was really obvious. I guess because it's bitcoin it doesn't fall under the remit of the securities and exchanges commission. People seem to be really suckered by Musk, but he seems like a total sociopath and it's hard to see Tesla not ending badly.
I had a great chat with one of my oldest mates in the Richmond yesterday who happens to specialise in transactions.
I mentioned this thread and he explained Bitcoin to me in 10 mins in plain terms. My question was 'So how does 'A' know I have the capital?' He shrugged.
I also was enlightened as to what happens when you use your card for a payment and what 'toxic' assets used to be to banks.
It was a real eye opener. Thoroughly explained using beer glasses and beer mats.
Beer and Beef has made us what we are - The Prince Regent
Every time a financial transaction happens, it is written down in a ledger. Some money gets added to one account and subtracted from another. In the normal world, a centralised institution like a bank writes the ledger and makes sure the money doesn’t end up in two places at once. In the crypto world, Satoshi Nakamoto devised a system to safely log a transaction on a distributed ledger shared across a network with no single centralised institution in control.
To make this work without anyone cheating: - A transaction happens and a competition is announced. - Computers on the network do a Piece of Work (completing a mathematical task). - The computer that gets the answer first wins the right to write the transaction in the ledger (add the block to the chain). - As a reward the winner receives some cryptocurrency, which is created from nothing specifically for the purpose (mining). - The difficulty of the Piece of Work is altered automatically to control how much new cryptocurrency is created.
The problem is that the Piece of Work acts as a handbrake: - Whoever wins the competition has to spend A LOT of energy on processing power to win the competition. - Whoever doesn’t win the competition HAS ALSO spent a lot of energy on processing power. - The more valuable the reward of currency is (if for example bitcoin has gone up and up), the more people will compete to win it, and so the more the winner will have to spend on energy to win, and, of course, the more energy will have been wasted by those who don’t win. - The more transactions there are, the more such competitions will occur.
So more valuable the currency becomes and the more it is used, the more energetically expensive it becomes. But you can't remove this handbrake because then someone might be able to cheat and double spend.
People argue about the exact numbers, but in 2018 bitcoin used <25% of the energy of the entire banking system. In 2021 it used almost 50%. This is about the same energy as a mid-sized European country. These are numbers from people promoting crypto. But bitcoin only does a tiny fraction of what banking does. There are hundreds of thousands more 'normal' transactions than crypto transactions each day. If it was ever to become more significant, if it was to approach even 10% of what banking does, the energy consumption would be astronomical! Right now, remember, it's still almost impossible to buy anything with it.
Bitcoin and other currencies are massively energy expensive compared to their usefulness, and this will only get worse if they’re used more. They have a handbrake that cannot be removed that makes them totally impractical at any scale. Decentralised digital currencies have incredible potential, but this potential cannot be released until someone invents another protocol that keeps them legit but doesn’t cost the earth.
Until then, this incredible rise in price we have seen, despite current falls, is based on hype not potential growth, because structurally bitcoin and similar cannot really sensibly become much more prevalent than they are today, at least if as a planet we have any intention of trying to meet carbon emission targets.
What if they use a green energy supplier, everyone’s a winner.
I had a great chat with one of my oldest mates in the Richmond yesterday who happens to specialise in transactions.
I mentioned this thread and he explained Bitcoin to me in 10 mins in plain terms. My question was 'So how does 'A' know I have the capital?' He shrugged.
I also was enlightened as to what happens when you use your card for a payment and what 'toxic' assets used to be to banks.
It was a real eye opener. Thoroughly explained using beer glasses and beer mats.
That shrug is the reason for WeWork, Uber, Lyft, Deliveroo, Peloton and all the bluffing unicorn bollox rest of it.
What if they use a green energy supplier, everyone’s a winner.
Yeah, if there’s enough green to go around. Problem is there isn’t. So if bitcoin uses all the green stuff, other things have to use the dirty stuff.
There’s also the idea Bitcoin can use ‘stranded’ energy - the excess energy at production that can’t otherwise be used or the stuff that’s wastes in transit. Perhaps it can, although better batteries will reduce that waste over time.
But bitcoin uses the energy of a European country now - when nobody even does anything with it. Nobody buys anything with Bitcoin except major corps paying off ransomeware. If we started using it to buy things in any numbers - houses, grocery, tube tickets - it would take up all the green energy, all the stranded energy, and probably all the dirty energy too. And that obviously doesn’t make any sense at all.
Yeah, if there’s enough green to go around. Problem is there isn’t. So if bitcoin uses all the green stuff, other things have to use the dirty stuff.
There’s also the idea Bitcoin can use ‘stranded’ energy - the excess energy at production that can’t otherwise be used or the stuff that’s wastes in transit. Perhaps it can, although better batteries will reduce that waste over time.
But bitcoin uses the energy of a European country now - when nobody even does anything with it. Nobody buys anything with Bitcoin except major corps paying off ransomeware. If we started using it to buy things in any numbers - houses, grocery, tube tickets - it would take up all the green energy, all the stranded energy, and probably all the dirty energy too. And that obviously doesn’t make any sense at all.
Unfortunately for me I'd been dallying/biding my time on buying disk storage, and now the "eco-friendly" Chiacoin rush has completely fcked the market.
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