OT Bitcoin pyramid

[harry]

BITCOIN Pyramid

A lot of monkeys lived near a village. ???????

One day a merchant came t o the village to buy these monkeys!?????? ??

He announced that he will buy the monkeys @ $100 ea ch. ??

The villagers thought that this man is ma d.?

They thought how can somebody buy stray monkeys at $100 each??

Still, some people caught some monk eys and sold them to this merchant and he gave $100 for each monkey. ?

This news spread like wildfire and p eople caught monkeys and sold them to the merchant.?

After a few days, the merchant announced that he will buy monkeys @ $200 each. ???

The lazy villag ers all ran around to catch the remaining monkeys!?? ?????

They sold the remaining monkeys @ $2

00 each.?

Then the merchant announced that he will buy monkeys @ 500 each! ??????

The villagers start to lose sleep! ... They caught six or sev en monkeys, which was all that was left and got $500 eac h.???????

The villagers waited an xiously for the next announcement.?

Then the mercha nt announced that he is going home for a week. And when h e returns, he will buy monkeys @ $1000 each!??? ????????

He asked his employee to take care of the monkeys he bought. He was alone tak ing care of all the monkeys in a cage.????? ??????????????? ??

The merchant went home.?

The villagers were very sad as there were no more monkeys left for them to sell it at $1000 each.????

Then the emp loyee told them that he will sell some monkeys @ $700 eac h secretly. ?

This news spread like fire. Since th e merchant buys monkey @ $1000 each, there is a $300 pro fit for each monkey.?

The next day, the villagers m ade a queue near the monkey cage.?????? ????

The employee sold all the monkeys at $700 each. The rich bought monkeys in big lots. The poor borrowed money from money lenders and also bought monke ys! ????????????? ???????

The villagers took care o f their monkeys & waited for the merchant to return. ?

But nobody came! ...? Then they ran to the employe e...?

But he has already left too !?

The vill agers then realized that they have bought the useless str ay monkeys @ $700 each and were unable to sell them! ? ??????????

The Bitcoin will be the next monkey business ?

This"monkey business " will make a lot of people bankrupt and a few people fil thy rich. ???

That's how it will work?

[Cursitor Doom]

It's *already* the "next" monkey business.

As your little story made clear, it's when the ordinary joe in the street starts to pile in the belief of making a fortune and the price/time graph turns parabolic that you know there's a meltdown a' comin'. Actually, you didn't even need to construct an allegory about monkeys because exactly the same thing happened for real with tulip bulbs (of all things) about 300 years ago!

[Brian Gaff]

Well I thought all normal people realised this long ago, this is why all the bitcoin spam is automatically dumped in my spam folder. Its really no different to all that buying up of debt the last time around. In the end if nobody allies any kind of currency to something people want its worthless. Brian

[Cursitor Doom]

And what is it actually backed by? Just number-crunching, zillions of computer cycles and electricity bills, ergo precisely nothing of what people want or need.

[The Natural Philosopher]

A bit like gold, bits of printed plastic paper or cowrie shells then

[Andrew]

The clever monkeys bought bitcoins in 2009 for 6 cents each.

If they managed to sell out at $19,000 without being defrauded, then they are laughing.

If they were defrauded, then they haven't lost much.

[Andrew Gabriel]

Someone I work with mined many hundreds of them back then, just to test out the performance of a new array of GPU processors. They were worth 7p each at the time, and no one bothered to keep them. Apparently, that's probably what happened to most of the early bitcoins.

- "look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves"

[newshound]

+1

[Cursitor Doom]

You've lumped totally disparate investment classes into one as if they were all alike in some way. Cowrie shells were an early form of currency based on their physical attractiveness. Gold has both industrial and cultural desirability to underpin its value. Printed plastic is fiat money with precisely zero intrinsic value.

[The Natural Philosopher]

No. These are not investment classes: They are all currencies. Tokens representing value but with little or no intrinsic value.

Like bitcoins, what is needed in a currency is the inability to duplicate. In tefcase pof gold thats because there isnt much around. In et case of cowerie skells I suspect similar. And in any case cheating in an island society? In the case of paper money its made spcually hard to counterfeit.

into one as if they

They are. See above

Cowrie shells were an early form of currency

Completely wrong.

They are all *tokens* of value that have no *intrinsic* value.

Until the advent of electronics gold had no practical use whatsoever. It was just rare and decorative.

>

[tim...]

gold has a utility value - albeit one lower than its investment value

The value of bits of printed pa[per is underwritten by a government. There's also no speculation in their value. They are worth a pound yesterday, today, tomorrow and next year.

agreed, but times were different then

tim

[Roger Hayter]

I thought currency speculation was actually rather rife! Or are you with Harold Wislon on this?

They are still used in rural bits of West Africa as well as elsewhere.

[Cursitor Doom]

Yes, they make paper currency especially hard to counterfeit, but then they let banks effectively print as much of the stuff as they like by creating credit out of effectively thin air! I believe for a long time now, hardly any of the total money supply is comprised of bank notes.

[Vir Campestris]

I'll see your no practical use and raise you some gold teeth.

Even before electronics the corrosion resistance was sometimes useful.

Andy

[tim...]

it has value in making jewelry because it is easy to work and doesn't tarnish

tim