3D printer for bitcoins?

It looks like two emerging technologies are beginning to merge.

What do you guys think about purchasing a 3D printer for Bitcoins?


[www.bitmit.net]

Technologies ?

I won't compare Bitcoins to real currency because of big number of factors... But nothing emerging here... You could ask about selling printers for $ £ or any other currency...

With new miners Bitcoin value will drop... By big D...

Shhhhh!!!!!!!!!!! We're all getting rich printing bitcoins, and we'd like to keep it that way.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/30/2013 10:49AM by Karmavore.

In all seriousness, though, bitcoins are interesting in a lot of ways. For one, you don't know who invented them, and who you're therefore enriching by propping up the price. That right there is a huge red flag.

Then, while the finite limit and mining approach to bitcoins is ingenious, it simply cannot work. The fatal flaw is that there is nothing about bitcoin that stops someone else from making a bitcoin2, or a bytecoin, or a AJDoodlerBuck, or any other number of virtual currencies. In that regard, virtual currencies fail a major test of a sound medium of trade, in that "virtual currencies" as a group are literally potentially infinite. Given the thought that went into bitcoin, the developers had to have known this.

So I see bitcoin as an ingenious way for its developers to make a shitton of actual money by taking advantage of those who actually believe in the causes that the developers pretend to espouse. Good work if you can get it.

Just my two cents.

Nothing stops two parties, A and B from using any other state currency on the globe. Not just bitcoin A and bitcoin B, but *any* coin in existance. The only key factor is acceptance by a significant part of users so the coin is actually usable. The official currencies today have some value that is influenced first by emitter banks which make the "physical currency" and second by all other normal banks which can make "account currency". The market value is the total curency mass divided by the total value that is being traded.

By tweaking the total mass of currency the emitters are actually stealing value from the users. For example on a market with 100 currency and 100 value, the emitter prints another 100 currency (making 200 total), and now emitter suddenly and effortless has the power to buy half of the existant value. And the prior users can now only buy half.

The natural conclusion is that as long as someone in the currency world can effortless make currency (including states), then that currency cannot have absolute value, and is always subject to being degraded by the emitter. Emitters will increase the amount and hence steal value in a natural way without anybody pointing at it.

Therefore the only way to make a currency that cant be degraded is to make one without emitter, or otherwise with so many emitters that they cant control the emitting rate by themselves. Hence bitcoin and alike have their emitting rate determined and controlled by mining difficulty. Imo, the way bitcoin is setup makes perfect sense if you are an economist, but perhaps not so much if you are regular user, because of prejudices from using normal currencies.

NoobMan, points taken. But the assumption you're making is that bitcoin will achieve and maintain "acceptance by a significant part of users so the coin is actually usable." And you are dead on in observing that there exist prejudices for normal currencies. What you call prejudices, though, I'd refer to as an inertia bias or well-reasoned preference. Without extenuating circumstance (a demand for transaction privacy, for instance,) why would one adopt a currency with such massive volatility, no consumer protection, and a real cost to keep and maintain? But most importantly, what happens to bitcoin holders when a better virtual currency comes along? And that's really the point I was trying to make.

As a side note, currency inflation ("emitters steal value") is a feature of a currency, and not a bug. That hoarding money causes us to lose value motivates us to deploy that capital in pursuit of growth, which makes us all richer. Of course, this isn't to say that all levels of inflation are good. And I certainly can't speak for all economists--and I don't want to give the impression that I think the existing fiat currency systems are beyond reproach--but given a choice between bitcoin and greenbacks, for instance, the decision isn't even close.

I root for bitcoin, but I see a lot of people online buying them because they believe in the ideals, (or getting rich off of that volatility) and I see that as a negative value play.

Yes well as i'm not native english for me prejudice means judgement before hand (literally pre-judice), but i agree its probably not the best choice, and i usually dont make good wording choices. Semantics around that. But i personally dont agree with the other part, e.g. "consummer protection" and that the govt is NOT stealing. Sure it is stealing - thats exactly what goverments do best. And the second best, is how they hide it. Well ofc thats just my opinion ofc.

For americans, when us govt bailed out banks in 2008 with huge amount of money, everybody said "goverment pays for that" - well this is false. Govt printed 10 metric tones of paper, and threw the money on the market. The ones who really lost value are all the ppls who had that currency at that time, coz all their buying power was diluted accordingly. The ppls paid all that bailout value - the govt only paid for 10 tones of paper and some priting ink - and in the end not even that coz the transaction was made electronically. So everybody else paid for that - except govt, they didnt actually paid for nothing. So when you take 100 usd bill in your hand and you look at it, realize that value is not yours, you cant "hold on" to it, and other can take some of it without asking.

The mechanism how this happens has more implications that ppls want to be aware of. For example "all ppls that use the currency" - in this case are not localized only in that country, but all over globe, so interestingly enough, one state with a good circulation currency can steal from citizens of other countries. Which is part of the issue. And why some countries keep their teeths in others to do their transactions with that particular currency. Also banks do the exact same but at smaller scale, they create an account value out of nothing -computer zeroes, money that didnt existed before- and you borrow it, and at the end of the term you are required to fill in with real money - or at least put in some value / effort results.

Why i dont agree on consumer protection or inflation being better for other currencies is simple. On paper and i mean theoretically, bitcoin has more inherent protection than any other currency on the globe. Because its unique, nobody can "just print it", hence its value is steady. All the other currencies of the world can only loose value and get devalorized, and they will surely do that. The bitcoin cant, its more stable (is capped), and as the value amount grows which its used for, then its exchange rate can only grow up. Well, as this is purely computer based then its safe at least untill somebody hacks it. I guess now the prize for the matematician which will figure out a better/faster way to deal with prime numbers is huge. And if some guy actually makes that, well, ofc wont make it public. Therefore to think it in reverse - it could be done already and we just dunno coz was not made public.

The "good" inflation is generally assummed around 3%, its meant to counter the usage loosing value of goods, e.g. a depreciation of a building coz its old since it has a certain life time+economy growth. So in time, some value is lost. In order for the currency demand / offer ratio to be kept steady it has to reflect this value decay + the new value generically created by economical growth. The "good" inflation is not meant to devalue a coin, but rather to keep its value steady. So the 1900's dollar versus 2013's dollar comparison is not about keeping 1 dollar value steady. That comparison is excess money made by 25+ govts and an indicator of how many times over and over the ppls were ripped off (this is ofc my choice of words). That is ofc separate of all taxes and alike. Ppls would react bad at 1% tax increase, but they cba for 10% of value lost via money being issued elsewhere - they cant see this directly.

That being said, i was refering to the point of value depreciation. In general i dont think bitcoin is the future coin, its not ideal. It copies an old mechanism (mining) so too much tributary for my taste. So i am not really a bitcoin advocate. But, i can see its merits and what it tries to do. However it also has downsides, thats why i am reserved. I dont think i saw anything of some value not being hacked. This is a mathematical problem with a prize of a couple of billions usd, and for such a prize i think somebody will figure it out - if it didnt already. Even if it takes a completelly new theory on prime numbers, or if it takes to write a new kind of math from scratch, sooner or later will be solved. But i am under the impression that under a certain context hacking it will be much simpler than all that.

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By tweaking the total mass of currency the emitters are actually stealing value from the users

This entirely depends on the emitter. And trusted emitters, like state banks, play that game carefully.

First thing is, a government isn't some fictious entity, it's the head of a state. Accordingly, if the government prints money to "steal" something, it steals from its self, from its own state. Because most of the owners of their currency happen to live there. One should keep that in mind when talking about governments.

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For americans, when us govt bailed out banks in 2008 with huge amount of money, everybody said "goverment pays for that" - well this is false. Govt printed 10 metric tones of paper, and threw the money on the market. The ones who really lost value are all the ppls who had that currency at that time, coz all their buying power was diluted accordingly.

Actually, the US$ didn't drop in value beyond some usual fluctuation. The reason is, since the US$ lost his connection to gold, there's also sort of a virtual money. Money which exists, but doesn't hit the market. Virtual credits were paid by virtual money and the real market kept floating nicely (admittedly, with some bumps). These virtual credits now start to go away and two weeks ago the US state bank started to collect this virtual money back, too, to compensate.

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Therefore the only way to make a currency that cant be degraded is to make one without emitter, or otherwise with so many emitters that they cant control the emitting rate by themselves.

This is close to the biggest flaw of bitcoins. By economic science, the value of money should represent the value of goods and economic power. But the amount of goods, services, knowledge (which also has value) constanly raises, so the amount of money has to raise, too, else the value won't drop, but raise. And Bitcoins can't deal with that, because there's a fixed upper limit.

Imagine, all the world would use Bitcoins some day. There are 21'000'000 bitcoins. The worlds' gross domestic income in 2007 was about 54'274 billion US$ (wikipedia), let's assume this value is kept. Accordingly, the value of every single bitcoin would have to raise by 54'274'000'000'000 / 21'000'000 = 2'584'476 US$ each year to deal with this. Do you really think people would continue to buy anything if they can get rich that quick by just hoarding their bitcoins? Very unlikely, people would avoid buying as much as possible, economics would get as close to a stop as possible.

That's why bitcoins can't work long term. They avoid inflation but have a very strong deflation built in. And strong deflation means economic stop. Setting aside our governments won't allow them as soon as they'd get a substantial foothold.

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I guess depends from which side you look at it. The so called good inflation of 3% is an adjusting mechanism, technically with its own right. Its a lever which if pushed genlty and with good reason, its a good massage. If you push it like crazy, its going to hurt, and its bad. The reason why its more of a bug than it is a "righteousness" procedure, comes from how it was actually used hystorically.

By govt i dont mean just gov, i mean parliaments approving yearly budgets, etc, everybody involved in state business. The currency value is not preserved, but instead is way beyond depreciated. This is so because political system allows and encourages this. Printing money for any reason is more politically beneficial than increasing a tax. In the same manner, even when is best to reduce spenditure, it still never happens because again, there is no political gain in it, on the contrarily politicians doing cuts are penalized regardless if its right thing to do. So budgets always grow, and borrowing always grows, even when it should not. These are like kids being put to guard the candy cabinet: the result will always be the same, they are gonna eat candy without any measure, till they end up in emergency room. This is how the states debt on the globe is soon 2 times over global gdp - that is to pay that, every single of 6 billion ppls would have to work 1.5 years without spending anyhting, without even eating.

The quanitive dimension here is the abuse of the function. But lets not forget there is a qualitative dimension, like with everything. Its one thing if a govt does something like that to build a road, autoband, school, or something to help general wellfare. But its totally different to produce currency to give money to bail out private companies, or as a matter of fact, even other states (like a recent case). So this makes it quite a bug, because of how it turns out for this lever to be used, both quantitative and qualitative dimensions.

About ppls not actually spending, well, ppls got to eat, drive, etc. Simply cant live without a certain amount - thats the roots of the economy. And if they spend with more care, i dont see that as a bad thing, on the contrary that would be desired. Generally speaking if spenditure would of been done with more care, we woulndt be in this mess today. There are some "economists" which preach the ideea that everybody has to spend money in order to have the economy running, this is false. These are half supporters of generic politics of "spend money like crazy to give to our lobbists companies", and "lets invent a useless job so that the economy grows", or "lets increase budgetary salaries so it will show up as economic growth". Do you want to buy yourself an indicator which would point to an economic growth - easiest thing to do is to throw money in, and indicator will show increase, but ofc it will be a fake one. Although media is full of things like this or similar endings, things like these dont work and more than that, these are techincally stupid things to say in the first place. Its like saying do you want your body thermometer to show less - put it on a colder part of the body. But the media is so full of this because on the small screen the educated and the not-so ... one have the same dimensions. The one who knows what its speakind and the one who doesnt become hard to distinguish. And the last category has much more representants.

How come nobody wondered about qualifications of parliaments, senates, and generally of the political profession? To run an autobike you need to take an exam to prove you understand how public automobile circulation works, as you are part of it. If you want to drive a bus, you have some responsibility to a handfull of ppls, so again, exams to prove you got what it takes. Not to mention other more responsible proffessions and the amount of exams required to "prove" stuff. However, to run a country, there is no exam, you dont have to prove anything, except that the vertebral bones are flexible enough to fit a politics career. But other than that, one could have no clue and no elementary knowledge of how things work - because that is NOT required. But still, these ppls are influencing the lives of not just of a few, but lives of ALL ppls. And they are doing that without one single bit of knowledge being required to do so. And ppls actually wonders why things go bad when they do. I would point at that for the root of all things, including how the money printing business is doing. Everybody prints money for everybody, and the only ones suffering are the ones actually creating value, and they see their value going down fast because of this.

I would use "appreciation" instead of "deflation", but idd i also think thats exaclty the opposite of how things currently work with normal currencies. The only difference is that is see it as a good thing. Because tbh, i dont like how normal currencies work atm, so i rather like bitcoin just for that. That being said yes, both sides are sort of bad, but at least in case of bitcoin nobody can control it and benefit from it directly, so it may turn out to be less abused and less of an issue just for that reason. And the less spending is what i would rather have, again in the opposite of how "media" position generally is.

Its just my opinion ofc. All of this is sort of highly interpretative and subjective, so pls dont mind me having a different opinion. I respect you and im not arguing. Just posting here to spill my guts out, coz im not really happy with how things are currently going, thats it.

Traumflug makes a lot of good points, but this is the winner, IMHO:

> This is close to the biggest flaw of bitcoins. By
> economic science, the value of money should
> represent the value of goods and economic power.
> But the amount of goods, services, knowledge
> ... constanly raises, so the amount of money has
> to raise, too... And Bitcoins can't deal
> with that, because there's a fixed upper limit.

Taking that further, let's assume for a moment that bitcoin becomes eminently successful, and human productivity and therefore the total "value of the world" increases. That implicitly means that the value of bitcoin will increase over time. Knowing this, why would anyone spend bitcoin? In other words, even on the assumption that bitcoin is totally successful, it doesn't seem to me that it can work.

Anyone more interested in this might look into the 1998 article by Krugman (yes, I know) on the Capitol Hill Babysitting Co-op. [www.pkarchive.org]
And if you'd like to see someone's application of the lessons of that article to bitcoin, you might start here. [www.forbes.com]

And I understand the frustration with economic policy, Noobman. I see tax dollars going to bail out multi-billionaires because they and their historical ilk have built a system in which they are politically powerful, and they've bound their fate to the fate of the nation as a whole. (Clever!) But I live in a place where real change is possible, albeit slow, and I generally have faith in the process despite the frustration.

But don't assume bitcoin is the answer because it's different from the problem. It's just a whole new problem. Be wary.