Any economists/political economists here? What's your opinion on Bitcoin, since everyone seems to be divide about it...

Any economists/political economists here? What's your opinion on Bitcoin, since everyone seems to be divide about it. Some perceive it's a new catalyst for an era of free transaction, others view it's a danger not only for international finance stability, but also for climate change (overusing electricity for mining, or something like that)?

Pro tip: if you missed the bitcoin train try to invest in those publicly traded companies that intend to trade them, their stock price is still pretty low.

>but also for climate change (overusing electricity for mining, or something like that)?
That overuse will end soon bitcoins are limited to 21 million if I recall correctly and most of them have already been mined.

Just like the rotten bank system, anything that involves speculation and magic money out of nowhere should be a major red flag for anyone.

Sure, but even if you yourself stay away from it doesn't mean others do.

>poor people have no right to become rich and be liberated from a life of wageslavery

Communists in the 21st century

i'm deeply suspicious. it seems like a classic bubble. and one rule of thumb i've read about with regards to bubbles is "if you start hearing friends, acquaintances and family members talking about dabbling in [said bubble], the bubble is going to collapse SOON and at this point in the life cycle it's about getting everyone to buy into [said bubble] in order to stave off its collapse". Bitcoin might be an exception, but yesterday I overheard this big buff dude in Walgreens talking about investing in bicoin and iraqi dinar to a friend over the phone and that struck me as one of those moments. Then again, this is simply intuition and not really based on any hard evidence.

>That overuse will end soon bitcoins are limited to 21 million if I recall correctly and most of them have already been mined.
Most miners have already moved to varies alt-coins like ethereum.

It's a bubble.

Bitcoin is a massive bubble and not even close to being economically sound.

If any 'coin' will make it long term it's Ethereum.

Also climate change isn't real.

>If any 'coin' will make it long term it's Ethereum.
Why's that?

I'd say there's at least a 75% chance that the government will shut down the bitcoin exchanges within the next year or two, using money laundering or funding for terrorism as an excuse.

Because it's much better in all aspects, bitcoin is really inefficient also it's encryption was literally created by the NSA.

Ethereum has all the components to become institutionalized whereas Bitcoin doesn't, it lives purely on price manipulation and hype. The fact that you see bitcoin even discussed in such fringe places as a fucking history board on Veeky Forums tells you everything you need to know. Even Veeky Forums, albeit being a shit board, doesn't even have threads about actual trading.

It's a tulip mania.

97% of the money you have is magical

>Also climate change isn't real.
found the american

And yet here I am, born in a place on the other side of the Atlantic, take your pseudoscience elsewhere.

In short in its current state, it's not a currency even if it looks like 1, it's more of a stock really, ideally a currency would be
>a stable store of value
But it's value changes changes in a single day are so big that it cannot be reasonably used for payment
>widely recognized (wether because of its intrinsic value as an object like gold or cigarette in prison)
right now you can't do your shoping in btc so it's not a currency you would want to be paid in and bwcause of above, it's also not a tangible thing with any use so it has only value if it's used and accepted by others (like the euro or the dollard) but it's not.

Right now btc are only used to speculate, it's value is WAY WAY to high, if it was to be used as a currency it would need to be stable so speciation on it would need to stop but it's value would drop like a rock if that ever happened, in either cases btc is fucked, plus half of it is owned by the ckinks, not exactly the most reassuring perspective, that alone makes me not trust that "currency"

Imo it's a speculative buble with a fancy coating of utopia on top, it's also a huge waste of energy, so definitely a meme.

Looks like I need to educate myself more on these things.

Question for cryptofuturists: how do things like estates work?
1) Rich uncle dies unexpectedly and leaves mucho $$$ crypto
2) As his only living relative, you get the crypto
3) Uncle either memorized the access code to his accounts or wrote them down in an unknown location. He didn't get around to writing a will so a lasting could give you the key. Either way you can't get the password

Would you be able to get the money out?

Lasting=lawyer, autocorrected

No, without the private key you are fucked, some guy lost like 10k bitcoins because he had the key on a hard drive he had dumped, there is no way to get the key back once it's lost.

Bitcash will overtake bitcoin.

>Just like the rotten bank system, anything that involves speculation and magic money out of nowhere should be a major red flag for anyone.
So all money.

Just buy the fucking dip

Yesterday a deer hunter hick from my old town in Ohio posted on Facebook asking for help on what Bitcoin was and how to get in on it. Thats when I knew its all over