Bitcoin is fundamentally sound

I swear I was only trying to anger my opponent into denouncing the Austrian Journal I also sited. I had no idea it would destroy his reading comprehension as well. I never once referred to bitcoins as being a Ponzi Scheme. That would be slander against Ponzi’s good name. I referred to it as a con, but did not directly give the details about which type of con it is. Maybe the Pro believes that it being able to be used in a Ponzi Scheme would make it a Ponzi Scheme. Perhaps, the pro put their bitcoins into Bitcoin Saving and Loan. Knowingly transferred to a pirateat40, aka BitBeard, and is unaware that his bitcoins are, in fact, “Lost and gone for ever. Oh my darling Clementine. ” If Madoff had used bitcoins instead of our financial system nothing would have been recoverable. It is clear that the ability to try, convict, and recover funds from the Madoff Scam is an advantage of the USD, and the lack of that kind of control is a disadvantage for bitcoins. As for the definition of Sound Money the Pro has not once given a direct reference to it. Adam Smith's “The Wealth of Nations” never uses the term Sound Money. Perhaps, to you the reader, Merriam-Webster isn’t authoritative enough for the definition of an English word or phrase. I submit to you every digitized book in the English language. Thanks to Google's NGram viewer we can do a search for “Sound Money”, and see just when it started being used. . http://books.google.com...=The phrase doesn’t enter into common usage until the 1850’s, and would be unlikely that Adam Smith would even have used the term Sound Money given that it’s not even used in his book. Lets use the unreputable Urban Dictionary's definition since I find it more enlightening to the Pros usage. “something that is cool, awesome, etc. comes from Ron Paul's awesome idea of bringing back the gold standard, which is sound money” When talking about Gold I choose my words carefully. It’s only that people “Believe” that gold is stable that they choose it for backing “Sound Money”. A belief doesn’t need to be a true belief after all, and you must be naive enough to believe gold is stable to believe in the ideal of Sound Money. Sound Money is an ideal that sounds good, but has yet to exist. In round 2, the Pro claimed that they could prove black markets are better, and more legitimate than the Legal Market if I pushed. I pushed with Human Trafficking. Since the Pro failed to even mention black markets in their rebuttal they must have conceded that the anonymity Bitcoins gives to the Black Market is one of its greatest weaknesses. The Pro asserts that the US Dollar can Evolve or Change, but only in value. It has gone from being controlled by individual states to being controlled by the federal government. It has gone from being based on Silver to being based on Gold. Its gone from being based on Gold to being based on Faith. We established the Second Bank of the United States as a Central Bank. When Andrew Jackson had enough of it he destroyed it. We’ve established the Federal Reserve, and allow them to control Inflation and Deflation with interest rates. Bitcoins have no controls to adjust Inflation or Deflation. If anything needs to change for bitcoins the controls to do so do not exist. The value of a bitcoin cannot be controlled when irrational actors are pushing prices up or down. The free hand of the market only works when the actors are rational, and does not address mania like Tulip Bulbs. The Federal Reserve changes with each new Chairman, and that Chairman is appointed, and approved by the President and Congress who the people appointed. The system surrounding and supporting the USD can change in more ways than can be imagined. Can bitcoin change? Can their be more than 21 Million Bitcoins? No, because of early choices in the Bitcoin protocol you cannot add more than the maximum. It’s an unfortunate drawback in Computer Science that you cannot define units with unlimited bits. My opponent is under the impression that Bitcoins can change into Litecoins. This is not the case. Both are a separate currency, and are forever married to early design decisions. Unlike the USD that could, if we go mad, go back to the gold standard. Bitcoins can’t even fit the World GDP of 70 Trillion Dollars in the address space of 21 Million Bitcoins. Even segmented down to its smallest unit given 2.1 Quadrillion you could not account for the 7 Quadrillion pennies. If you had to account for the smallest unit of the dollar, the mill, it would be 70 Quadrillion. That smallest bitcoin unit would be worth nearly 30 cents, and you couldn’t go smaller. At that point, because it's deflationary, the buying power of that tiny segment will only grow. What will you do when it has the buying power of a dollar, or 10 dollars? You’re stuck with something too valuable to spend anything on. It can’t even meet the long term demands as a “medium of exchange”. That assumes that people keep buying in until all money becomes Bitcoins. But like Tulip Bulbs it will keep going up until its eaten every penny suckers are willing to sink into it. It could take years just like the Tulip craze did. The faster it grows, and the longer it take the worse it will actually be. There is no free lunch. There is no win-win scenario. No way to know when the crash will occur. Only suckers willing to throw their money away. This is the best type of con. A con where the con-man can become the victim too. If you side with the Pro take your money, and buy your bitcoins now. If you side with the Con sit back, and enjoy the show. I would love to see what happens when a cultural niche sends itself into a depression like the Dutch did with Bulbs. The opportunity to collect data on this kind of phenomena is priceless.