Society/Culture Bitcoin

King Brown

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Aug 12, 2017
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This is true - bots make up around 80% of US market transactions on the big exchanges by volume.
There is a good book that came out years ago describing how one of the first (and most successful) bots was designed - The Predictors.
It's actually a little scary how well some of these systems actually predict black swan events as well as normal trading patterns.
By their nature black swan events are meant to be unpredictable.
 
By their nature black swan events are meant to be unpredictable.
That's the point - the prediction machine was so well designed that black swan events were accounted for and in some cases predicted within the modeling.
 

King Brown

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That's the point - the prediction machine was so well designed that black swan events were accounted for and in some cases predicted within the modeling.
I think you’ve missed the point of what “black swan” means.
 
I think you’ve missed the point of what “black swan” means.
I know what black swan means - hence the reason this machine is so remarkable.
You clearly missed my point. Again.
 

King Brown

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I know what black swan means - hence the reason this machine is so remarkable.
You clearly missed my point. Again.
You don’t know what unpredictable means do you. If something is “predicted” then by its nature it is not unpredictable.
 

Darkyprotector

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This smells of con
Who in their right mind would put their superannuation into this
Great for crims
 
Live look into that guy who bought 15 million worth of BitCoin ATMs to put around Sydney.

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Nah money laundering will make him heaps.


On iPhone using BigFooty.com mobile app
 

King Brown

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Not able to be predicted from past events.

Until it is.
Yes, this is explained by Taleb:

What we call here a Black Swan (and capitalize it) is an event with the following three attributes.

First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme 'impact'. Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.​

Taleb has also constantly said there are few Black Swans in finance. He has repeatedly said at length that the GFC was not a Black Swan.

To Taleb, the creation and success of Bitcoin (or the blockchain) would be the Black Swan. Not it's bubble.
 
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You don’t know what unpredictable means do you. If something is “predicted” then by its nature it is not unpredictable.
think he is saying events previously thought to be black swan no longer become black swan. Everything in this world is theoretically predictable as the universe is deterministic. Its just whether man has the information to be able to predict it.
 

Herne Hill Hammer

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Work with two guys. They've both put a tiny amount of money in, one put in $150 the other $60. They talk about it all day and spend all day looking at their phones.The $150 man talks about it buying him his $30,000 Harley. $60 man thinks it's going to explode like Bitcoin and pay his $400,000 mortgage and put his kids through private school and uni. If his value drops a few dollars he sounds like he's been asked to surrender his first born or donate an organ or limb.

$150 man, I'm $500 in front, no I'm $100 in front, now it's $300. I asked him if he could get it out. He said yep, sure, anytime he liked, it was like an atm. I asked if he'd actually taken any out or tried to. He said that he hadn't, but he'd tried and he must have done something wrong because he couldn't get it.

A pair of absolute muppets.
 
A bit of pump n’ dump, like what happens with everything that could be beautiful in society, invariably it is destroyed by greed.

it makes me smile that people buy into a currency and see it run like an investment but pile in anyway. good luck to those making money in a ponzi scheme but the losers shouldn't whinge on the way down.
 

RupieDupie

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it makes me smile that people buy into a currency and see it run like an investment but pile in anyway. good luck to those making money in a ponzi scheme but the losers shouldn't whinge on the way down.

Investment (=munny) ruins everything
 
May 5, 2006
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Bitcoin spruikers are worse than vegans. At least vegans understand what they are talking about.

It's amazing the number of people who are converts to the future of blockchain that don't know what a blockchain is.

There's also seemingly a lot of people buying to some kind of anti-establishment revolution while simultaneously counting their (on paper) establishment money.
 

The Passenger

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In serious decline now. Was always going to happen at some point.

Well done to all those who got in early, but there's going to be a lot of tears from people that got in around November and December just past.

As someone who's been following bitcoin and as far more interested in the technology behind it than the actual value of it (although I did make a bit of cash a few years back but hardly enough to write home about), I can't help but have a wry smirk at all the bitcoin experts that suddenly sprung up over the last few months that in reality actually know nothing about it other than it was once worth a few cents each, then exploded and each bitcoin is now are worth $10,000.

Wouldn't be surprised if the value drops back under $1000 US soon.
 
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The thing is that the only thing giving it value is people pumping money into it. There's nothing to say it should be worth 1c, $100 or $1m per coin. It's dotcom 2.0, with the exception that shares are intended to be income generating.

The problem for the cult of BTC is that now it's seen USD20k anyone with a decent amount of them isn't interested in what they were worth over the last 5 or 6 years. They're convinced that it's all "FUD" and you should "HODL" because they will keep going up and up. It's a bit of a catch 22 IMO. The only way any of these things will ever be widely accepted (ignoring the whole decentralised system, trying to get around the man thing which will never work long term) is with stability, and once they are stable they stop being interesting to invest in.

Agree 100% about how many 'experts' there are. I've heard that blockchain is great plenty of times, but not one person that thinks it is great has explained to me what it is, how it works or what its value should be.
 
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I do love the way they talk about 'fiat' as though they know what that term means.

Oh a lot of them know, they just hate government telling them what to do, and I think the Bitcoin popularity was a response to the Quantitative Easing that they saw as devaluing their wealth.

But yeah a lot have got no idea as well.
 

The Passenger

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Agree 100% about how many 'experts' there are. I've heard that blockchain is great plenty of times, but not one person that thinks it is great has explained to me what it is, how it works or what its value should be.
As it's not simply a two line explanation do you need to know? I am happy to explain but it's not a really two minute job. I work in software development so am familiar with it, although haven't done anything blockchain related for about a year now and there has been quite a few advancements in it. Can't really be ****ed going into any detail if you are already familiar.

As for it's potential uses I often see it written that it's a solution for a problem that doesn't exist. I agree with that to an extent. You got a tech meetup and every second ******* developer says I got an idea and I'm going to use blockchain to implement. They don't stop to think about whether it's the right technology. But it's the buzzword in tech circles. Me and a mate started writing an online voting application (it was not an original idea) based on blockchain a couple of years ago but we ended up getting bogged down in paid work. But that is one area I believe is a great use of blockchain. https://followmyvote.com/ is currently leading the race in this area. Worth noting the lead developer Brian Fox is one of the most well known software engineers in the world.

Medial records, financial contracts, fraud prevention, charity funding distribution and IT security are a few examples of potential blockchain uses I could see. There's no shortage of articles written about potential uses. Basically if there is a system where is data is stored by only one or two actors (the parties within a transaction), then there is a potential to secure that data from manipulation through a distributed ledger.
 
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