Something to consider is that as you gain more experience in a domain to start to realize how much you really don't know and understand. This is a natural progression from being more of a novice. If you see gaps in your experience, you need to fill them. I think your best options are professional training or courses or learning by doing. Building a network is also valuable, such as building a group of colleagues who meet regularly to share best practices, issues, etc.
I'm launching an open source initiative supporting several social media platforms, starting with Matrix/Element, a messaging app similar to WhatsApp; and then Mastodon, a microblogging platform similar to Twitter. The overall effort is being called the "Resiliency Network" in reference to creating a social media platform that will foster resilience in relation to the significant social, environmental, and political challenges we're facing today. If you're interested to get involved, please respond to this comment. Thank you!
I’m interested. But you’re not the first person to think of this. What do you see as the reasons why other similar efforts have failed? Why will you succeed?
I’m not trying to be negative. I’m just strongly of the opinion that making this happen will take much more than saying “we should make a better social media”, and I’m wondering if you’ve got that far.
If the distributed social networks ever get enough users to attract spammers, they'll have an even worse spam problem than the centralized ones. They don't collect enough info network-wide to detect spammers.
I feel like that particular issue could be resolved with even the most rudimentary reputation system. It’s how humans have solved the problem amongst ourselves. But I agree it will be a problem.
I only had half a dozen, all from the last month. This is pretty surprising. I use Instagram regularly, though I only sign into Facebook occasionally.
All of the activity I had was from games that I casually installed and then deleted in the past month. These are games that I signed into with Google Play, which displayed advertisements primarily for Facebook.
Speaking of which, some of Facebook's advertisements are absurd.
"This is a summary of the 285 apps and websites that have shared your activity." hmmm, that's more than I expected. A lot of them are from sites which probably had a Facebook pixel on them.
There's "modern society collapse" and there's "a 5 day blackout in a city", most people are not even prepared for #2, it doesn't hurt to plan for that.
Most farms depends on big tractors - if society collapse they will have a lot of food rotting in the field unless humans get out there and deal with it by hand. You won't like your lifestyle, but if you can get to a remote farm (remote is key - you need to get away from labor competition) you can do okay.
walls? moat? traps? guns and a lot of ammo? because you answer "no" to any of that, your well-stocked rural setting going to be visited by the hoards fleeing from city and depleted in a week, leaving you to die of starvation in next 3. So that month I was talking about, still going to happen
The other investors will sell the now marginally overpriced clean energy funds and buy the now marginally underpriced fossil fuel funds. Stock prices and capital available remain the same.
Thanks! Does Zelle have a monthly transaction limit (# of transactions or $ amount)? Also, can you use Zelle independently or does it need to work through your existing bank account?
If you visit an upscale hotel, the "public" restrooms in the lobby typically have larger stalls with fully enclosed doors/rooms. I think you're right. It's mainly a cost cutting issue.
I'm not a Bitcoin expert, but I don't see how anyone can view Bitcoin as anything other than an elaborate pyramid scheme. Said another way, why would anyone "invest" in Bitcoin unless there is an expectation that the price of Bitcoin will increase? At some point, the price of Bitcoin will level off, investors will exit, and then the price will fall, quickly and steeply.
I read someone else who wrote about this before. One question I have is why you think that specifically about Bitcoin and not about other things like gold or stocks?
People who purchase stocks early do so expecting the price to rise when more people buy in later for higher prices. Same thing with gold. People say stocks have value because they provide dividends, but when was the last time anyone made significant income due to dividends? I think most companies do not even pay dividends.
If Bitcoin was actually a pyramid scheme then the early investors would be eager to cash out at the expense of everyone else, but many people involved in Bitcoin truly believe in the technology and the idea of a global currency that exists outside of government/bank control. Those people are not eager to part with their Bitcoins, and I don’t know why that would change all of a sudden.
>One question I have is why you think that specifically about Bitcoin and not about other things like gold or stocks?
Gold has similar issues. But there is significant non-speculative value in gold. How much, I'm not sure, but it's useful for electronics and for decoration, etc. Also, gold's value is the supposed stability. Bitcoin's value is it's supposed growth, which leads to nasty feedback loops.
I wouldn't invest in gold. I think it's still in a bit of bubble caused by the 08 financial crisis.
Stocks are a different story altogether. You are buying equity in a company that has value. The stock market might be under or overvalued at any given time, but it is still tied to the value of the companies.
> Stocks are a different story altogether. You are buying equity in a company that has value. The stock market might be under or overvalued at any given time, but it is still tied to the value of the companies.
I would say stocks are valued by the perceived value of the company and/or the potential future value. They are somewhat speculative too. Look at Tesla or Amazon for example. They have insane values despite not even turning a profit for long periods of time.
I get your point though. Bitcoin has no intrinsic value tied to anything specific, but I still don’t think that makes it a pyramid scheme. Bitcoin has A LOT value to people in countries that are on the brink of economic collapse due to inflation. Even in the United States, the FED prints over $200 billion a month. So in theory Bitcoin should hold value over the long term better than the US dollar.
Stocks are definitely speculative, but just not nearly to the same degree. They are speculating on what will happen in the meatspace. Telsa's valued because people are betting they'll become a major car company. And stocks like Tesla are outliers.
Bitcoin speculation is now just speculation based on price alone. Why is bitcoin going up? Because people think it will go up. That is a nasty feedback loop, that right now is causing it to have insane growth. The higher the price the more demand, the more demand, the more price goes up, etc.
But the opposite can (and will) happen. The demand for bitcoin drops because the price drops, the demand drops cause the price to drop further. etc.
Since the stock market is based on meatspace demand, if Tesla started to spiral for no reason, someone would buy it just to make a cash profit from it. People like Warren Buffet buy companies they think are undervalued to capture the profit.
>Bitcoin has A LOT value to people in countries that are on the brink of economic collapse due to inflation. Even in the United States, the FED prints over $200 billion a month. So in theory Bitcoin should hold value over the long term better than the US dollar.
They'd be better off buying property, securities, or even just USDs.
Bitcoin has gone up over 10 times this year. There is a huge risk it'll go back down to 1/10th. I wouldn't put any significant amount of money in such a volitile "asset."
Sure eventually, but most pay out dividends over their lifetime that are greater than their current value or get bought out. Growth companies don't, but that's because they think they'd do a better job reinvesting.
Even stocks that don't pay dividends have a value floor(assuming the company doesn't go bankrupt)- the amount of money you can get by selling off company assets(office buildings, tech, equipment, patents etc.).
> I'm not a Bitcoin expert, but I don't see how anyone can view Bitcoin as anything other than an elaborate pyramid scheme.
A pyramid scheme requires unsustainable exponential growth in number of new participants. Bitcoin can survive without that, so it's not a pyramid scheme.
> Said another way, why would anyone "invest" in Bitcoin unless there is an expectation that the price of Bitcoin will increase?
Investment being motivated by expectation of future price increases is not enough to make something a pyramid scheme. I mean, that's what motivated most investment in anything.
> Bitcoin can survive without that, so it's not a pyramid scheme.
Can Bitcoin really survive without an ever-increasing price? If it can't, it's a pyramid, because it does not generate wealth like most investment avenues.
> Can Bitcoin really survive without an ever-increasing price?
Requiring ever-increasing price as measured in some other currency is not what defined a pyramid.
Requiring unsustainable growth rate which must eventually consume all of the available number of something limited is; most strictly, a pyramid scheme requires exponentially increasing number of participants at a rate that exceeds population growth (usually on the scale of requiring the entire population to participate in a very short period of time.)
To not be a shrinking role in the economy, Bitcoin may needs a long-term growth rate (once coin mining is exhausted) equal to the growth rate of the economy (which may or may not be always positive over the long-term, and if it is may only be logistic), but that's not a pyramid.
Except that pyramid schemes are usually designed from the start as such.
Bitcoin wasn't: it was designed in good faith as a cryptocurrency. That people ended up using it as a speculative device says more about these people than the actual technology.
Also pyramid schemes are usually run by few people that cash out when it is no longer sustainable. Once it is so, it's over, as it usually the scheme gets exposed and owners lose all credibility. Bitcoin on the other hand went already through several "crises", and came out even stronger.
Also, in the case of Bitcoins, as more people buy them, and original owners cash out, the amount of actual owners dilute, so that the possibility of a few people dictating huge movements in price lessens over time.
Calling it a pyramid scheme it is an oversimplification, although on the surface it shares many traits with them: I don't think many people can predict how it will turn out.
We could say that many had an educated guess that Bitcoin would be the way of the future. It's initial promise was brilliant, however at the time of writing it seems to have lost much of its use (e.g. cheap micro-transactions between peers), due to technical and economic issues (limited transaction rates, insane volatility). It's not clear whether any of these will change, so I wonder what people are investing in? I believe what the parent poster was referring to is that much of the investment seems to be purely driven by speculation on the value, rather than its promise as a platform.
Bitcoin's purpose isn't for investing. People might choose to invest and speculate on the future value of Bitcoin but, among other things, Bitcoin's purpose is a currency that is decoupled from a central government.
Not very feasible, right now. There are some technical hurdles that can be overcome with some improvements in the code which will drop the transactions fees to almost nothing.
For now, Bitcoin seems to be taking shape as a store of value, like gold. Another, more updated crypto currency, might take over as day-to-day currency while Bitcoin is the larger value store.
Hard to say how things will shake out but it's surprisingly still the early days of crypto technology.
Prior to the current bubble, the value of bitcoin was largely based on it's use cases for selling illicit goods over the internet, collecting money for ransom ware, evading currency controls and taxes, and general money laundering.
An investment in bitcoin was a bet that it would continue to be used for criminal activity.
The current bubble is based on exactly what you say, though. Price manipulation by a few shady, unregulated exchanges leading to insane price increases, followed by a speculative mania.
> The current bubble is based on exactly what you say, though. Price manipulation by a few shady, unregulated exchanges leading to insane price increases, followed by a speculative mania.
The current bubble is mostly based on what you say, but it is still great for all the things you mentioned earlier, "selling illicit goods over the internet, collecting money for ransom ware, evading currency controls and taxes, and general money laundering"
It's true the price is fueled by speculation, not Bitcoin's underlying usefulness, but there's no reason to believe it's a pyramid or ponzi scheme.
It's entirely possible that, at least some of, the price is being boosted by mechanisms that would be illegal in other, regulated, markets. But it's not clear, at least to me, how much of an issue that is either legally or practically.
What's the point of investing in anything? If you work for a salary, as opposed to working for food, ie. hunting, gathering, or farming, then you do investment. Do you expect the "price" of that salary to increase?
> At some point, the price of Bitcoin will level off, investors will exit, and then the price will fall, quickly and steeply.
As someone who has been in the space for a while, this is exactly what happens. There have been multiple 80%+ declines from peak to trough over the years.
> elaborate pyramid scheme
Having been in the industry since 2011, I have heard this sentiment since day one. Also tulips.
>I'm not a Bitcoin expert, but I don't see how anyone can view Bitcoin...
As a self-admitted non-expert, these initial observations might make sense. Become an expert and you will see differently. (It took me about two years to understand Bitcoin)
Could you share what took you so long to understand and what have you learned? Not being sarcastic, but it took me a month to have a good grip on the subject, so I cannot imagine what took you two years to learn. Can you please share?
Wants important is the blockchain technology. As Bitcoin continues to grow it further legitimizes the strength of the blockchain technology which can be applied to many other areas in tech. Bitcoin itself is useless, essentially sending "thin air" back and forth as someone else put it.
I think dismissing Bitcoin and promoting blockchain technology kind of misses the point. Sure, a lot of companies will invest in blockchain tech and maybe roll out their own blockchains, but that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
A blockchain without a peer to peer/decentralized network and a crypto currency/incentive system is nothing more than an over-architected centralized database.
The trust provided by using a blockchain is based mostly on the incentive for people to secure the network. Sure you can use hashing and encryption to verify transactions without it, but if it is a private chain, then one person with access can perform a 51% attack and alter all of the transactions. That is the exact thing something like Bitcoin is trying to prevent.
I agree that Bitcoin itself may not end up being the final coin that survives in 5 or 10 or 20 years, but it has the first mover advantage and strong brand recognition, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
Lets tone it a down a bit. I'm sure there are idiots who took out a HELOC to buy BTC, just like idiots who did it with gold, or to bet the horses, or buy lottery tickets. A few idiots can't really change the reputation of something. The internet somehow survived through a crash that led the economy into a recession. When/If BTC crashes, it will be a small blip in the economy.
