People are weird:
Bitcoin is in the “mania” phase, with some people even borrowing money to get in on the action, securities regulator Joseph Borg told CNBC on Monday.
“We’ve seen mortgages being taken out to buy bitcoin. … People do credit cards, equity lines,” said Borg, president of the North American Securities Administrators Association, a voluntary organization devoted to investor protection. Borg is also director of the Alabama Securities Commission.
“This is not something a guy who’s making $100,000 a year, who’s got a mortgage and two kids in college ought to be invested in.”
Bitcoin has been soaring all year, starting out at $1,000 and rocketing above $19,000 on the Coinbase exchange last week. The price on Coinbase, which accounts for a third of bitcoin trading value, is often at a premium over other exchanges.
The cryptocurrency was trading at just under $16,700 on Coinbase at 2:21 p.m. New York time Monday.
I kinda feel like people buying bitcoin right now are the folks who headed to the Gold Rush in California in 1856. Just a couple years late, guys. But who knows!
At any rate, if there is a bitcoin crash, what impact could it have on the economy?
scav
certainly a lot of whining and “analysis” — bit of a boomlet for the media and professional-opinion class.
Major Major Major Major
If it’s tomorrow, hardly any. I don’t think the investment bankers have had time to take out trillions in tertiary derivatives on bitcoin mortgages yet.
MobiusKlein
I keep my bitcoin under my mattress. Avoid the bank runs that way
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
Some individuals will get screwed. Lots of black market folks will get hurt. Dude bros will cry.
Major Major Major Major
Also, I just heard that Ed Lee, mayor of San Francisco, died. (Then again, I just got up.) He was only 65.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
So everybody wins?
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
Until a few days ago, I hadn’t heard about bitcoin in like 3 years. I thought it died.
jl
IMHO, none
Major Major Major Major
@scav: There just isn’t enough money in it to have an impact you’ll notice. If the reporting you’re reading makes it seem otherwise you should find different reporting.
Yarrow
Maybe the Trump organization and Trump family members are over-invested in bitcoin. That would make any crash more entertaining.
eric
Imagine a can opener….
diierent-church-lady
I like how he talks about 100k as though it were substanance income.
TenguPhule
Depends on how many fools and how much actual money went into it.
Sister Golden Bear
I have a feeling they’ll also be seeing the elephant.
Droppy
Not an economist, but pretty sure no wealthy people, Republican legislators, or bankers will be impacted, except they will probably sweep up the meager leavings of the poor and downtrodden and claim the whole thing was Obama’s/Clinton’s fault.
TenguPhule
@eric:
A digital eco-friendly can opener.
MikeEss
…I can hardly wait until somebody (Goldman Sachs?) is selling the Bitcoin equivalent of the notorious “collateralized debt obligations” and their evil handmaidens, “derivatives”.
I’ve seen that movie before…what a wild ride. And you pay to take that ride, but you also pay for other richer riders to take that ride too. And in the end I’m poorer, but they’re richer…and they’re looking for the next opportunity to screw us all into the ground…
Fun times…
Dmbeaster
The speculation is in the “next greater fool” phase in which people invest because they expect to be able to sell profitably to those who jump into the speculative bubble later, even though the bubble is already dangerously inflated, and no one is investing based on a rational analysis.
TenguPhule
@MikeEss:
Too late. Rollout starts next week, IIRC.
Yarrow
@diierent-church-lady: I was actually thinking he picked a higher income to illustrate that even more well off folks should think twice about investing in it.
Major Major Major Major
@MikeEss: Derivatives are very common in commodities markets. What made the mortgage-backed securities such a problem was, in addition to the insane leverage, the fact that they were based on shitty mortgages on houses with fake prices.
There are already insurance-like derivatives for bitcoin, like there are for corn.
cthulhu
Not much. The same effect as a single, not commonly trading stock crashing. It was noted the other day that about 1000 people own 40% of the Bitcoins.
Hoodie
The chance of a complete meltdown will likely remain so so until other digital currencies (e.g., ether) are more widely used and more easily fungible with dollars. Ether will likely expand quckly because of use in startup crowdfunding. From what I’ve been told, because of the relatively small ether market, people are using bitcoin as an intermediary currency to cash in on these deals to get operating capital (or buy Ferraris). If you sell too much ether for dollars at one time, the market could crash.
Amir Khalid
About a couple of months ago, I started seeing clickbait-section articles (y’know, the ones listed as “partner content” by more reputable sites that take the clickbait “content” providers’ money) bigging up Bitcoin and saying how it was growing more popular with Malaysian investors. Let me just say, I had my suspicions.
Bruce K
I strongly suspect it’s going to be like a remake of the end of Trading Places, only without Ralph Bellamy or Don Ameche to class up the joint. If something goes wrong with Dunning-Krugerrand speculation, it’s going to go wrong big.
Did I say “if”? More likely “when”.
Tenar Arha
If bitcoin is like the California gold rush, who’re the hoteliers, hostlers, & general suppliers? Who’s the Levi Strauss?
? Perhaps the server farms, computer suppliers, & electricity providers….
catclub
@Major Major Major Major:
@MikeEss:
I am not so sure derivatives will be a problem. How many derivative products are there based on gold? I am guessing close to zero, because there is no income stream to be divided up in funny ways. The mortgage derivatives have that income stream property. Bitcoins don’t.
Johnny Gentle (famous crooner)
FYI, the boom happened because Japan recognized bitcoin as an official currency earlier this year.
While it obviously had its uses online before then (Silk Road, here we come!), its acceptance by a pre-eminent national economy turned it into something else entirely.
jl
@Tenar Arha: I agree. So far, not enough of real economy driven by bitcoin mania for crash to affect demand or supply of real goods and services much. Bitcoin not some hidden network of vast connections that would create financial instability. A bunch of foolish people who took out mortgages to buy bitcoin would lose their houses and other people would move in.
Very different from 2001 dot.com bust and very very different from 2007 housing bust and financial crash.
Regnad Kcin
@eric: i always heard it: “first, assume a can-opener” — the very notion of ‘imagination’ among that profession being ridiculous
NotMax
“I invested in bitcoin and all I ended up with was this lousy T-shirt.”
Chip Daniels
@Tenar Arha:
And who will be the card sharps and bordellos and hustlers who fleece the hoopleheads?
scav
@Major Major Major Major: Since when does actual importance correlate with volume of whining and analysis? White males will get weepy over their non-NRA-approved metric of dick-length — near a gaggle of jounalists hungry for a non-Trump / non-pedophile-harrassment shiney pet-rock of a topic.
Major Major Major Major
@scav: Sure, and I don’t see why somebody who knows better would read that, either.
catclub
@Chip Daniels: The standard exit plan for bitcoin holders is: ” having your bitcoins stolen”
There was a funny article describing how bitcoin does none of the things it was supposed to do. bitcoin-is-none-of-the-things-it-was-supposed-to-be
not currency, not store of value, not disintermediator of the finance industry.
catclub
@NotMax: I was hoping the T-shirt had the $450M Leonardo on it.
Roger Moore
@diierent-church-lady:
I don’t think he intends to describe it as subsistence income. He’s saying that Bitcoin is a gamble, and people who can’t afford to lose everything shouldn’t be getting involved– and he’s absolutely correct.
Major Major Major Major
@catclub: Oh look, a weird new technology is being used for something other than its intended original purpose, everybody laugh at the nerd
HeleninEire
Not asking anyone to respond or answer this, cuz I really don’t give a shit (unless it affects my retirement money that I have in the market, you know, that money that I scrimped and saved for 35 years. Then I give a shit). But, I’m pretty smart and I do not have a fucking clue what bitcoin is. I don’t understand it at all. Even after reading Anne Laurie’s post from yesterday.
Matt McIrvin
@Johnny Gentle (famous crooner): What, endorsed by a government????? How could such an irrelevancy possibly affect our libertarian betters?
Matt McIrvin
@HeleninEire: It’s like a virtual form of Beanie Babies, only invented and promoted by libertarian tech bros with goldbug-like economic obsessions. That’s pretty much all you need to know.
debbie
@HeleninEire:
It won’t affect your savings at all, unless you move your savings into bitcoin
geg6
I’ve tried to figure out what the point of bitcoin is, but all I can come up with is buying illegal shit and to fleece the rubes stupid enough to invest in it. As we all seemed to agree yesterday, bitcoin is the tulips of the current era. You’d have to be an idiot to invest in it.
And just because Japan is stupid doesn’t mean we have to be.
Major Major Major Major
@HeleninEire: It’s a thing that you own.
More of the things are created by people verifying where the things are.
That’s kind of it. The actual implementation is pretty cool though.
Thoroughly Pizzled
@Tenar Arha: So Amazon Web Services.
scav
@Major Major Major Major: The gullable ill-informed chatterers are exactly the juicy bulk of the jounalists audience — an American audience mind, so adjust expectations lower. We’re already hearing far far more about this topic than it merits. So, economic impact: a few extra clicks for media accomplished.
Roger Moore
@Tenar Arha:
FWIW, Bitcoin has long since moved away from using general purpose computers. The first phase was to use graphics cards instead of regular CPUs, since they’re better at the kind of processing used for Bitcoin mining. The next stage was to switch to ASICs (application specific ICs), i.e. custom designed chips intended only for Bitcoin mining. And yes, the companies providing that kind of custom hardware are definitely the equivalent of the Gold Rush suppliers. In the same category are people running Bitcoin exchanges and similar ancillary stuff, who make money on every transaction.
Major Major Major Major
@Thoroughly Pizzled: AWS doesn’t have anything to do with it, unless they happen to provide the backbone infrastructure for Coinbase and the other big exchanges. All the mining (and therefore the bulk of the work) is done by specialized computers sitting in places with cheap electricity like Iceland, calculating expensive cryptographic hashes. The Internet itself is a minor, though essential, component as a percent of computation.
TenguPhule
“Meet the Lawyers trying to Protect Trump from Mueller’s Killers”
FFS, Wapo, you’re supposed to be better then this.
They really are ginning up to try and do something stupid and illegal against Mueller and the investigation.
TenguPhule
Lock your phones in attack position. This is it.
Major Major Major Major
@TenguPhule: Is that going to be enough time to type everything up and run it through spell check and not accidentally increase the corporate tax rate again?
justawriter
@Tenar Arha: … the guys charging five bucks to process a bitcoin transaction (about 15 times what a bank charges for processing a check or credit card transaction). Which is funny because bitcoin was supposed to remove those intermediaries from the libertarian paradise of government-free money.
Roger Moore
@geg6:
You left out money laundering and evading capital controls. Those are why it’s supposed to be a big deal in Russia and China.
Roger Moore
@Major Major Major Major:
All the serious mining is. You’ll hear about small-time players doing shit like putting a mining rig in a Tesla so they can get “free” power from their superchargers or writing mining clients in JavaScript so they can surreptitiously run them on other people’s computers when they visit a web page.
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major:
They don’t seem to care at this point. They really want this done before Christmas and seem to think any issues can be fixed later. Its crazy, but they’re not letting that simple fact stop them.
Major Major Major Major
@Roger Moore: I meant the serious mining, yes.
VeniceRiley
I have a friend who had a live internet game show giving bitcoin away back when it was $300. Not enough views back then.
Jack the Second
So here is the thing that will make Bitcoin weirder than previous scams.
It is a distributed, decentralized scam.
This bubble too will pop, but why would that make a difference? The same or a completely different set of hucksters could just start reinflating it, the next day or month without missing a beat. There’s no single group of fraudsters to be shut down, no company to go bankrupt, nothing at the core but promises of free money.
I don’t see how Bitcoin succeeds, as a useful, legitimate currency, but I also don’t see how it fails so hard we’re ever rid of it.
Matt McIrvin
@justawriter: I think going to paid transactions was always the model, because beyond some point you can’t motivate running the miners to actually create new bitcoin.
Unfortunately that depends on a healthy rate of transactions, and the deflationary nature of the “currency” is a powerful force to keep it from circulating.
Matt McIrvin
@Jack the Second: That’s how chain letters and pyramid schemes have always worked–you keep getting new “distributors” in who are motivated to evangelize the system to expand their downline. They’re hard to eradicate even after a lot of people have been cleaned out, because new fools do pop up eventually even after the scheme has collapsed from a lack of a sufficient volume of fools.
Cermet
@Johnny Gentle (famous crooner): So, in Japan it can be exchanged for Yen’s via banks? If not, their statements are just more hot air to further inflate the bubble.
Jack the Second
@TenguPhule:
FTFY.
Tenar Arha
@Roger Moore: @justawriter:
Ooohhhh, that’s good for a chuckle.
So basically the service economy to support “the miners,” the people who’ve figured out how to get a cut via “processing the gold or testing it’s purity or smelting it,” & the suppliers of equipment to “dig the gold.”
Fair Economist
@Chip Daniels:
There’s been a good deal of that already. Mt. Gox, the Magic trading card site which became the broker for most bitcoin trading at one point, was hacked and nearly a million bitcoins stolen (almost a tenth of the supply at the time).
I know it sounds like a plot from a novel parodying libertarian/dudebro culture, but it really happened and I am not making that up.
Roger Moore
@Matt McIrvin:
Not to mention that the system by design can’t handle more than about 7 transactions per second. They need to change the block size if they want to handle more, and they’ve been very reluctant to do that. They’re apparently planning on coming up with some kind of secondary market to handle more. IOW, their system was never well thought out as a serious financial system, and they’re trying to hold it together with bubble gum and bailing wire.
trollhattan
@Roger Moore:
Sort of related, the Swiss Bitcoin Bunker.
TenguPhule
@Roger Moore:
Which is doomed to fail because everyone knows you’re supposed to use duct tape.
The Dangerman
@Yarrow:
Indeed. I’d give my left one (maybe both of them) to see the Trump spawn mowing lawns to pay the bills (assuming they don’t go to the Pokey).
Speaking of Trump, he’s just a full on bully and someone’s going to have to punch back hard. I mean, really hard. Gillebrand should have called into question his manhood this morning when she was called a whore.
Major Major Major Major
@Fair Economist: For all the love Ethereum has been getting recently, everybody seems to have forgotten the incident last year where a shadowy entity, possibly its creator, ran off with 10% of it, and the community split in two over whether or not to restore the funds, resulting in a hard fork of the currency. Or the $300 million stolen so far this year.
TenguPhule
And doesn’t this sound familiar.
We are being buried in bullshit.
beef
If bitcoin goes to zero tomorrow, the global economy will burp and continue on its merry way.
Total number of bitcoins ~ 20 million. Current value of 1 bitcoin ~ $20000. Total value of all bitcoins: ~$400 billion.
That’s a big number for you or I, but the relevant scale is global GDP, which is roughly $100,000 billion / year. Bitcoin’s not used for anything systemically important. It’s not even very well connected to the rest of the economy.
catclub
@Jack the Second:
I will just point out that Ethereum and another cryptocurrency are up today. The obvious lesson (now) with bitcoin is that you have to get in early, so all the new coins are getting those people who believe that. Never mind that you have to get in early on the ONE coin that ends up succeeding (if any ever do.)
Roger Moore
@Tenar Arha:
Essentially correct. The people who make money on a gold rush are the ones who can demand payment up front rather than depending on chance.
ET
I get the impression that banks may not be moving into Bitcoin soon – at least if Jaime Diamon’s opinion is anything to go by (though JP Morgan may regardless and Goldman’s CEO is more sympatic). Buffet isn’t a fan.
I find the discussion generally interesting if for no other reason than the related stories that come out. It seems China is a BIG player in the power behind bitcoin and its role/interest. Beyond that I have no idea what happens when/if it blows and most likely don’t know either.
NotMax
@Roger Moore
Baling wire.
/perennial pet peeve
dmsilev
@TenguPhule: PROSPER, huh? Apparently the GOP thinks that acronym generation is more important than actual content. I’m shocked.
catclub
@beef:
I agree on the first point for 1 bitcoin. Not so much if everyone tried to cash out. It is kind of like when one 100 share stock sale raises the market price by
$1 and then the ‘value’ of the company goes up by $20M. That $20M was not really put there.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
There was a huge speculative bubble and crash in 1637, in the Netherlands, involving tulip bulbs. People gonna speculate. Always ends the same way though – last guy out loses his shirt.
TenguPhule
@dmsilev: I do not like living in perpetual 1984 lite.
TenguPhule
@NotMax: What would you like the bale set at?
Matt McIrvin
@Roger Moore: I’m pretty sure that was because it was concocted by people with crackpot economic theories.
My understanding is that there’s nothing about the blockchain tech that inherently requires it to be absurdly deflationary or quite so energetically expensive, and many other cryptocurrencies aren’t this way. But Bitcoin is the one that’s attracted the most interest.
beef
@catclub:
The $400 billion is an estimate of how much “wealth” would vanish if the value of bitcoin went to zero tomorrow. It’s a reasonable upper bound, given current data. The critical point for the estimate is actually the lede I buried: Bitcoin’s not much correlated to the rest of the economy. If it vanished, I doubt it would drive a crash in anything else.
Fair Economist
@Major Major Major Major: The fact that something like Ethereum still exists after multiple successful thefts of that magnitude shows the religious devotion of adopters. No real currency subject to that would get used unless the issuing government could compel it.
Peale
@beef: Yep. I the big banks are blockchain curious, but none of them are involved in a big enough way to pose a systematic risk like mortgages caused in 2008. We may find some hedge funds go under, but the deritives trading exposure of the market is in the tens of billions, which can be absorbed. We may find some global oddities – maybe some bank in someplace like Cyprus or Malta goes poof, but nothing huge.
Fair Economist
@Matt McIrvin:
If you’re using it for a currency, I don’t see how things can be different in the long term. If it’s not deflationary, there’s no reason to “invest” in it and so it will never get going. If it’s deflationary, eventually the cost of creating must become astronomical.
catclub
@beef:
alternatively, you could calculate how many dollars have gone in so far, that would be lost in that case. Given that most bitcoins came into existence when the price was far lower, the total invested is much smaller than $400B
Mike J
Anyone who uses bitcoin is a moron. All my money is in dogecoin. Such coin. Many blocks.
catclub
@Fair Economist: Blockchains (distributed, publicly confirmable ledgers) are useful. attaching them to the expensive process of mining bitcoins – not so much.
NotMax
@TenguPhule
In much younger days, hefting bales off the delivery truck and thence stacking them from floor to eaves until a stable’s hayloft was full provided a hands-on relationship with baling wire.
WaterGirl
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
Silver lining!
Peej
I have Bitcoin, but not for investing/speculating/hoarding purposes. It’s the most convenient way to fund my online wagering account as well as cashing out from it. FWIW, last Monday, I got a payout for the equivalent of 900.00 USD and it’s been amusing to see it go up to 1,200.00 USD, but I know it’ll eventually come crashing down. The question may be when will I convert it to actual USD? My Bitcoin wallet has a feature where you can fund a prepaid Visa card. Once it’s on the card, it’s actual “cash”, and no longer subject to the vagaries of the market. In fact, I just funded it for 250.00 USD. The remaining 950.00 USD equivalent in my Bitcoin wallet will continue adjusting to the market. What if I lose it all tomorrow? Meh, I’m a degenerate basketball and football gambler, it happens. Hey, how ’bout them Dolphins winning on the +450 Money Line last night!
Roger Moore
@Major Major Major Major:
It’s almost as if these cryptocurrencies might benefit from some regulation and law enforcement.
WaterGirl
Another bitcoin thread. Oh, Balloon Juice, why do you hate me so?
Major Major Major Major
@Matt McIrvin:
Nothing about blockchains requires them to be used for cryptocurrencies or other monetary transactions at all, even.
? Martin
@Matt McIrvin: Blockchain is a pretty straightforward technology for distributed ledgers. It has no necessary connection to currency, it’s just a handy tool for leaving ledges out in the open. A different application of blockchain could be college credentialing, where everyone’s degree and institution is publicly reported but because of how the blockchain works, impossible to alter. If you wanted to confirm that so and so graduated with the degree they claim, you could check any public ledger.
Major Major Major Major
@Fair Economist: It’s best to think of these things as commodities, in which case the popularity even after $300m of theft makes more sense. What doesn’t make sense is holding on to Ether after last year’s incident, which was super sketchy.
If you think of it as a brown paper bag full of gold, this year’s thefts are the equivalent of train heists or muggings. Last year’s theft would be more like if a cabal of gold miners decided to steal 10% of the world’s gold. That’s what should diminish your faith in gold, not the train robberies.
SiubhanDuinne
@WaterGirl:
My sentiments exactly. My scrolling thumb has seldom had such a workout!
Major Major Major Major
@? Martin: You could, in fact, use a blockchain to keep track of beanie babies.
@WaterGirl: At least your name is spelled right this time!
gvg
@catclub: Some of the descriptions of Bitcoin say the original miner of each coin keeps getting a small share each time it’s traded. I don’t understand how that would work but I would think that would be an income stream that would attract the derivative inventors. Shame really.
I happen to think some of the attention on bitcoins lately is a bunch of us waiting to watch the crash of a type of person we don’t care for, the libertarian tech fools.It’s not like a lot of these stories aren’t also warnings. some lemmings insist on going over a cliff.
One of the things Bitcoin was supposed to do was not be stolen AND be anonymous. I think that is basically impossible in definition.
Roger Moore
@beef:
And that’s almost certainly a gross overestimate. Almost all of that wealth has been created out of thin air in the past couple of months, so it’s hard to imagine that it going back into thin air is going to do a lot of damage.
HeleninEire
@WaterGirl: LOL
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop trading put options on default swaps on indexed derivative futures.
HeleninEire
@Peej: tl:dr BUY GOLD
NotMax
@Major Major Major Major
Heh.
“Think you used enough dynamite there, Butch?”
Major Major Major Major
Seriously though y’all are paying way too much attention to this shit.
TenguPhule
@WaterGirl:
I blame Baud. And Doug.
p.a.
Whoever may be negatively impacted, it will be Obummer’s fault because reasons.
ETA: Whomever?
Roger Moore
@Mike J:
Very currency. Wow.
TenguPhule
@p.a.:
Pedants of the blog, Untie!
beef
@catclub @RogerMoore:
Yes, obviously. This is why I said upper bound. But the loose upper bound is quantitative and leaves me feeling pretty safe, so I’m not going to waste time trying to figure out how much has actually been spent. (Anyone know the going rate for electricity in northern China over the last few years? Or the cost of manufacture for ASICs?)
Matt McIrvin
@gvg: I’d completely ignore it except that the energy consumption involved is starting to be a significant contributor to global carbon footprint.
Matt McIrvin
@Fair Economist: Isn’t that true of any attempt to create a new currency, regardless of technology? If your strategy involves convincing people to hoard it because it will appreciate in value, then it won’t work as a currency; it’s just some sort of investment instrument.
Major Major Major Major
@WaterGirl: I like you.
WaterGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: Hey, we’re at 100 comments in this thread, we could always start our own conversation.
@Major Major Major Major: Progress!
Major Major Major Major
@p.a.: whomsoever.
WaterGirl
@Major Major Major Major: Then today is a good day!
Roger Moore
@Major Major Major Major:
I’m not sure I agree. Yes, it’s true that a cabal stealing is a bigger concern than random muggings, but those muggings are still worth paying attention to. There’s a reason people have switched over time from handling large transactions in cash to checks to various forms of electronic payment, and protection from theft is a major factor. It’s not obvious that the reduced transaction costs from something like Etherium is worth it when you consider the increased risk of on-line theft.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
Honestly, bitcoin convinces me people are even crazier than I thought.
Major Major Major Major
@Roger Moore: but the situation you described didn’t actually diminish the value of cash.
Doug R
IT’S A NEW PARADIGM™!
TenguPhule
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
I thought that was Trump.
NotMax
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
The vintage pet rock market will be making a comeback any day now.
Also too, pogs.
;)
TenguPhule
@NotMax:
Playing POGs were fun. The hype really ruined what was an old style game.
Major Major Major Major
I still can’t believe my mayor died.
Doug R
@Tenar Arha:
This makes me think some trumps are into bitcoin. Grandpappy drumpf ran a few whorehouses during the Alaska Gold Rush in the PNW before he was kicked out of Germany permanently.
rikyrah
1.Just spoke with a source in the Mobile (AL) County NAACP. Here are some things that are happening today on the ground in Alabama that did not happen in the 2016 election. Thread:
— Al Giordano (@AlGiordano) December 12, 2017
rikyrah
Uh huh
Uh huh
CNN’s Jim Acosts says @PressSec pulled him aside to warn him against asking Trump about his sleazebag attack on Gillibrand or he won’t be allowed back.
— JoeMyGod (@JoeMyGod) December 12, 2017
J R in WV
@Roger Moore:
And no one knows who designed the bitcoin systems, and few really understand why it is built the way it is. Various people have been accused of inventing bitcoin, all deny any connection with it.
Someone not quite as smart as they think they are!
Doug!
Zero effect if it crashes. Total market cap of 9 billion in a 17 trillion dollar economy. Apple comes up and down as much in a typical week as the total market cap of bitcoin.
Major Major Major Major
@J R in WV:
What makes you say that? They probably have a hundred million dollars by now. ETA all from other people’s labor.
trollhattan
@Doug!:
That’s only 9 Dirksen Units.
different-church-lady
@Matt McIrvin:
“I bought Bitcoin before it was
coollegit.”different-church-lady
@geg6:
Ah, so you’ve figured it out.
trollhattan
@rikyrah:
From my vast list of Things That Will Never Happen–the rest of the press pool should double-down and keep asking about it. They’re all (except for Fox et al) suffering from Stockholm Syndrome after a year of this crap.
catclub
@Doug R:
I doubt it. Could Trump keep quiet for a year on that?
Major Major Major Major
@catclub: Barron. He knows the cyber.
Culture of Truth
heck I wish my relatives had gone out to California in the 19th century
JR
The Chinese economy? Maybe a little.
Just One More Canuck
@trollhattan: I thought it would be this:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/26/Conversation_with_Smaug.png
different-church-lady
OT: “Former Facebook VP says social media is destroying society”
Chamath Palihapitiya used to be in charge of Facebook’s growth. Now he doesn’t let his kids use the platform.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@NotMax: “A shit-eating grin doesn’t change the fact that you’ve been eating shit. You can know a pet rock makes a shitty pet, but if you buy a pet rock, you’re still an idiot.” – Bill Maher
Seriously, how was that even a thing?
J R in WV
@Major Major Major Major:
I am obviously not as smart as I think I am!!
Will they still have that much money if the exchange rate value of BitCoin goes to its actual value of $1.49?? If it was me, I’d be moving a fixed rate of that pool into actual equity investments on a daily basis, but I’m a conservative socialist type! ;-)
As opposed to the libertarians out there!
different-church-lady
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):
Cheap tongue-in-cheek novelty. Everyone was in on the joke.
woodrowfan
I confess I am Bitcoin curious. Fortunately I have no money to spend on it or I would. Not a lot. $1,000 maybe
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: i wish one of these guys would grow a spine. Ask your question and say out loud that you were threatened with not being allowed back if you asked it. They have their own power if they would just use it for good.
woodrowfan
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): they were fun as a joke.
WaterGirl
@trollhattan: I hadn’t seen this comment from you when I wrote my comment at #145.
Amaranthine RBG
Bitcoin is rationally priced.
catclub
@Amaranthine RBG: No irrational number prices?
marcopolo
@rikyrah: No idea what the final result in AL will be today, but I wouldn’t be surprised if overall turnout today wound up being close to the Presidential vote total in 2016 (could it be higher–maybe). Obviously there were a lot of up and down the ballot races in 2016. That plus the presidential contest increases turnout but in a place like AL are there ever all that many competitive races between Ds & Rs when all is said and done? I’d wager not. Today’s election, on the other hand, is a very competitive state-wide race with at least the level of coverage that I imagine the presidential contest got in the state in 2016. Plus lots of motivated voters. And while I’d like to believe that Jones voters are the more motivated. I don’t think we should underestimate the rural Trump/Moore folks who’d like nothing better than giving the finger to the “establishment.” I definitely think the AL Sec of State’s prediction of 25% turnout will be way way too low. All that being said: GO JONES!
Chip Daniels
@catclub:
*meme of Morpheus*
What if I told you…
That separating the hoopleheads from their money WAS what Bitcoin was meant to be?
rikyrah
I know I’m a broken record, but *we need to focus on voter suppression and election interference*. Both domestic and foreign threats are a problem.
If you don’t tackle these issues now, you likely won’t get another chance later.
— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) December 12, 2017
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@Mike J: BWAHAAHAA
NotMax
Mocking fodder.
While former is technically correct, twice ousted would be more accurate.
Redshift
Seeing reports of police at polling places “looking for people with outstanding warrants.” Quelle surprise. Also the old “text messages telling people their polling place has changed.”
Not that it will help with this election, but I suspect that with the record donations to the ACLU, quite a few police departments may be contributing to the “full employment for lawyers fund” in the coming months…
trollhattan
@WaterGirl:
Can you just imagine prostrating yourself before Possum Queen daily, simultaneously praying and dreading she’ll take your question? They all act like shelter dogs.
Major Major Major Major
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant): I have five bucks worth of dogecoin!
…which, now that I’ve googled it, is worth a lot more. People are idiots.
debbie
@Major Major Major Major:
That was a real surprise.
Ruviana
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): It took bitcoin to convince you of this????
NotMax
Heh.
Roy Moore Doesn’t Even Ride A Horse Well
debbie
@rikyrah:
CNN should report that at every opportunity. Shame those bastards.
Major Major Major Major
@NotMax: Clearly it’s not one of those hip, city-slicker media-savvy horses. Real men don’t have those.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@NotMax: Stonekettle had the best response:
WaterGirl
i watched the 4-minute Doug Jones video earlier this week, but i had not listened to his full speech on Dec 5 until just now. If you haven’t watched/listened to that, you should. It’s worth the time.
tobie
@rikyrah: Fighting voter suppression has to be a number one priority for the party. I hope they’re going to sponsor internships in all swing states over the summer–heck in all 50 states!–to help voters get the documentation necessary to register to vote. Great way, too, to get young people involved in the party.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@Major Major Major Major: I honestly didn’t see that coming.
debbie
@NotMax:
He’s definitely not sitting well, and the horse knows it. Though it kinda matches his tiny gun.
NotMax
@Major Major Major Major
“Frappucino grande, extra alfalfa.”
WaterGirl
@trollhattan: Why do you hate shelter dogs? Seriously, though, these white house reporters and many more have completely lost the plot. I don’t care what the story of the day is, they could make the real story be about the intimidation at the hands of the press secretary.
If being in the room is more important than the information it gives you access to, you’ve lost the plot. If getting invited to the right parties is more important to your journalistic integrity, you’ve lost the plot. These people have no shame – the reporters that care most about their access – as well as the power-wielding people who lie and threaten to protect their status.
NotMax
@debbie
More accustomed to being astride young fillies.
trollhattan
@NotMax:
Kind of like that his horse is named Sassy, as it brings to mind Phil Hartman’s Sassy Magazine skits on SNL. “Does it smell Sassy in here?”
trollhattan
@WaterGirl:
My most charitable view of NYT keeping Haberman on the job is that she represents the closest access they’re ever getting to this president. How sad is that?
germy
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@germy: imagine the all-out, 50-alarm firestorm if Clinton did that.
germy
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: Or Obama.
ruemara
@rikyrah: We have only this election and that’s it. My heart tells me this and in the past 15 years, when I have that feeling, I’ve been correct. We lose and we lose big for at least another decade or 2. Think about it.
Major Major Major Major
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant): I am 50% surprised which is a lot these days.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@trollhattan: Haberman = Drumpf spokesperson
germy
Incompetent grifters aren’t good with details.
Major Major Major Major
@ruemara: yep.
WaterGirl
@trollhattan: Beyond sad. (10 * SHAMEFULLY PATHETIC) to the power of 10.
ruemara
@Major Major Major Major: I’m so cheery.
WaterGirl
@ruemara: By this election, do you mean 2018? 2020? I don’t think you mean just wish special election.
Major Major Major Major
@ruemara: no, realism is good. What makes it different from doomsaying, before one of the doomsayers asks, is that it’s realistic.
ruemara
@WaterGirl: anything between 2016 up to 2018. By the 2018 election and immediately after, of the republicans retain majorities in Congress and in state legislatures and if they can get state governorships, I fully expect constitutional convention to be called and I expect the full evil of the Supreme Court being in their hands to bear fruit. You guys will literally be waiting for your oppressors to die. Since I can’t Orlando my way out of that and my green card expires in 2019, I will probably be relocating elsewhere, as I would also expect – as I’ve seen an increasing level of scrutiny of personal views for immigrants – that my activism history and social media would make my greencard renewal not a smooth process.
Major Major Major Major
@ruemara: ‘Orlando’?
WaterGirl
@ruemara: That’s a pretty dim view, especially since it will be 2018 in about 15 days. I wish I could disagree with what you’ve said. It’s now or never.
The Moar You Know
@germy: The press are morons. They hold all the cards here. The first thing Jim does is ask, in the conference, if he asks Trump questions about Gillibrand if he’ll be allowed back, yes or no. Then he asks the fucking question regardless of that answer. If he’s not allowed back then CNN raises holy hell about what the president has to hide. This is not hard. The press has internalized their own oppression, which is pathetic. They made Trump. They can just as easily ruin him.
seaninclt
@Matt McIrvin: That is, quite possibly, the stupidest thing I’ve read on the internet today.
schrodingers_cat
@trollhattan: What favors is she doing him? It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
germy
NeenerNeener
For what it’s worth, Politifact just announced their “Lie of the Year”: that Russia didn’t mess with the 2016 election.
Of course, they’re also claiming that Russian interference had no impact on the results…..
germy
debbie
@Major Major Major Major:
A brilliant movie with Tilda Swinton. I’d link, but this iPad is too temperamental.
debbie
@WaterGirl:
No. It’ll be harder, but it will never be over.
debbie
@germy:
This would be the time for an “I’m Spartacus” moment.
Kathleen
@tobie: DJ Hughley had a nice interview with Jones on his radio show today spread through a few segments. I was very impressed with Jones. He impressed me as soft spoken but intense.
schrodingers_cat
@ruemara: I think I have asked you this before but why don’t you apply for naturalization. You can tell me that it is none of my god damned business that’s okay too.
Feathers
@NotMax: You missed the better one below: Roy Moore trots to the polls, unclear when other 3 Horsemen will arrive
Kathleen
@WaterGirl: Preach!!!!
Kathleen
@trollhattan: NYT thinks Maggie is wonderful and doing a great job period. Explains a lot, doesn’t it?
schrodingers_cat
@debbie: That’s right. We are fighting for the soul of this country, I will leave predictions to other people. We fight and fight till we win.
Feathers
@debbie: Ahem. A brilliant book by Virginia Woolf, adapted into a fantastic movie starring Tilda Swinton, directed by Sally Potter.
Aleta
Or like the people who sat in their parlor in Ohio and bought a map of a gold mine and the mining claim from some guy they’d never met before.
marcopolo
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant): So Arnold riding a green bike through the streets of Paris means what exactly?
Peale
@marcopolo: that he needed to hire a better divorce lawyer?
Roger Moore
@marcopolo:
It means he’s the same publicity hound he’s always been, and he’s still worried about global warming.
areyougonnaeatthatsandwich
@eric: I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to assume that can opener.
No One You Know
@HeleninEire: I was hanging in a bar with some folks I didn’t know well. One guy kept hyping Bitcoin, but couldn’t actually describe what it was. Kept referring me to “go look online and learn.” Dude, if you can’t define this thing you’re excited about, I’m not going to “go look it up” on your day-so.
He thinks he’s going to pay of his residence with something he can’t explain.
Uncle Jeffy
Given that there are supposedly 21 million bitcoins in existence and they are priced at about $20,000 per, the market cap of Bitcoin works out to less than half of the market cap of AAPL. So my conclusion? Virtually (pun intended) no effect.
Aleta
@germy: They’re not accustomed to following instructions. They feel no pressure to do anything correctly. Someone will fix it, and they’ve always been shielded from exposure. I think it’s why they commit such blatant crimes and stupid errors.
Aleta
@NotMax: his horse? I bet that horse never saw him before in it’s life. They put him on a gaited horse thinking he’d look like a smoother rider.
Chet Murthy
@Tenar Arha: Heh, and contract programmers selling their skills by the hour to fools who want blockchain-this and blockchain-that.
ruemara
@schrodingers_cat: Cash is an obstacle. As is time.
TenguPhule
@Redshift:
Weren’t we already at peak lawyer once Trump started doing illegal shit in the White House?
TenguPhule
@tobie:
Its not. Ousting seated Democrats is.
TenguPhule
@germy:
Don’t have to imagine. Remember the huge stink when he evicted FOX?
schrodingers_cat
@ruemara: Unless they have changed the forms dramatically since a year ago, it should take you no more that a couple of hours to fill the form. The most difficult part was to precisely give an account of the time that you were not in the country, your arrival and departure dates. If I can be of any help, please let me know. IIRC there is also financial assistance available for those who qualify.
ETA: I made a quick check and the form seems to be the same.
Chet Murthy
@Matt McIrvin:
Uh, I’d be interested in what you’re referring to. Certainly if “blockchain tech” is construed to include the requirement of “neither need nor possibility of centralized controlling authority or consortium” (== “censorship-resistance” FWIW (and I ROFL at the idea, just to be clear)) I don’t see how you avoid the latter problem. Specifically, I see no evidence that the imbeciles behind all this blockchain stuff understand what “proof-of-stake” (the only contender I know of to solve the “energetically insane” problem) actually is (they couldn’t write a protocol correctness proof to save their lives). And everything else is based on a centralized controlling authority, so unsuitable .
As for “deflationary”, it’s (a) part-and-parcel of the mindset of the folks in that world, but more importantly (b) IMPOSSIBLE to avoid. If you want to avoid (again) a central authority, at *best* you could have a fixed rate of coinage (as is true today) forever.[*] That rate MUST be much, much lower than required to actually satisfy the liquidity needs of a real OECD nation, b/c bitcoin starts off as a tiny, tiny economy, and any really high rate of coinage would result in crazy inflation in the early days, right? But then as the thing ramps up in popularity, you’ll eventually reach the point where the GROWTH RATE OF ADOPTERS alone is enough to cause deflation.
[*] think it thru: you want a way to manage the rate of coinage of some currency, but without a central authority. How do you do it? At some point, you gotta count votes. But we all know the old saying about “he who counts the votes”. These jokers fundamentally don’t believe in institutions composed of humans. So they can’t accept any of that. Which is why the coinage rate of BTC is all controlled by fixed algorithms.
Chet Murthy
@Chet Murthy: After reading a bit more of the thread, I thought I should note that there’s “blockchain technology” and then there’s it’s application to cryptocurrencies. It is true that “some kinds of blockchain technology (it’s a broad church)” don’t have the kinds of ridiculous energy issues that bitcoin’s use does (“proof-of-work”). It is -also- true (I believe) that if you want bitcoin’s purported libertarian/anti-government strong-points, you’re *stuck* with proof-of-work, and hence with the ridic energy consumption.
There’s some fundamentally stupid ideas baked into the bottom of Bitcoin. Fundamentally stupid. And I say this as the guy who designed the Hyperledger Fabric archtecture (not that that’s some claim to brilliance — it’s straightforward stuff, and IBM still managed to fuck it up). I think I -do- understand the alternatives to “proof-of-work”, and why they’re not acceptable to the (uh) cyber-crypto-lol-bertarians.