Merged Bitcoin - Part 3

Suddenly said:
It's the same thing in that it is putting money at risk hoping that you get more back.
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A casino may "put money at risk" on individual bets but the likelihood of them making money overall is essentially a certainty. Few investments are that certain, but the principle is the same, stack the odds in your favor and make numerous smaller investments instead of putting it all in one spot.

Suddenly said:
Like prediction markets. These can be efficient in determining the probability of an outcome. The point spread/money line is basically that. When the prediction is about a football game it generally has little real world application.
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Sports betting isn't gambling from the perspective of the bookmaker. If they do their job correctly they make money no matter what the outcome of the game.
 
psionl0 said:
Already discussed - many times. BTC is no more a zero sum game than any other commodity.
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This claim has already been debunked multiple times. repeating it doesn't make it any stronger than the previous times you have asserted it.
 
lomiller said:
A casino may "put money at risk" on individual bets but the likelihood of them making money overall is essentially a certainty. Few investments are that certain, but the principle is the same, stack the odds in your favor and make numerous smaller investments instead of putting it all in one spot.



Sports betting isn't gambling from the perspective of the bookmaker. If they do their job correctly they make money no matter what the outcome of the game.
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I was making a substantial amount of money over a long number of trials betting sports and playing poker by finding +ev situations. I was still gambling no matter how analytically I went about it.

It's I guess a matter of semantics. Gambling is seen by many as a pejorative term and those who put money at risk are prone to define it in a way that excludes what they do.
 
psionl0 said:
Already discussed - many times.
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Yes, you were proved wrong in those discussions.

BTC is no more a zero sum game than any other commodity.
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BTC is not a commodity.

And, as has been pointed out to you many times, with commodities, you have got the commodity. There's always a demand for gold, for example, to make things with, even if you have trouble selling it on the commodities market, you can sell it to jewellers and electronics manufacturers.
 
Suddenly said:
I was making a substantial amount of money over a long number of trials betting sports and playing poker by finding +ev situations. I was still gambling no matter how analytically I went about it.

It's I guess a matter of semantics. Gambling is seen by many as a pejorative term and those who put money at risk are prone to define it in a way that excludes what they do.
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But what you were doing is fundamentally different than what the casino is doing. In sports betting, as long as the casino sets the odds so that there is ~ equal betting on either side they literately can't lose money. They are, in essence, collecting a fee to allow you to bet against someone else.

Speculators in the commodity market play a slightly similar role, but because there are other benefits to producers and consumers like risk mitigation and more efficient capital utilization everyone can still win (where in the sports betting someone looses more than you win)

It's not risk free, but calling anything with an element of risk "gambling" waters down the term. Is a bank gambling when they make a loan because the borrower may default? Are you gambling when you drive to work because you could get in an expensive accident on the way?
 
lomiller said:
But what you were doing is fundamentally different than what the casino is doing. In sports betting, as long as the casino sets the odds so that there is ~ equal betting on either side they literately can't lose money. They are, in essence, collecting a fee to allow you to bet against someone else.
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They are gambling that they can set and move the line to balance the books.

They gamble, they just collect enough vig to where they are making money in the long run unless they are complete muppets. That's the only difference, really. If it weren't for that I could essentially arbitrage odds across books and also win with no risk.
Speculators in the commodity market play a slightly similar role, but because there are other benefits to producers and consumers like risk mitigation and more efficient capital utilization everyone can still win (where in the sports betting someone looses more than you win)
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The business of speculation is in isolation a zero sum game. The middlemen trading wheat contracts among themselves are absolutely playing a zero sum game. Not all of them can win.

That this game itself has the societal/economic benefits you describe is a different issue.

Which I guess brings that back to bitcoin. Bitcoin trading is zero sum just like any commodity trade. That's a fair statement. It's also fair to say that the wheat zero sum game benefits the world outside the game while the bitcoin game harms the world outside the game. Which is more to the point.


It's not risk free, but calling anything with an element of risk "gambling" waters down the term. Is a bank gambling when they make a loan because the borrower may default? Are you gambling when you drive to work because you could get in an expensive accident on the way?
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All life is a gamble. It's a term often used as a pejorative to make a negative personal value judgement about the social desirability of the risk taking activity in a way that promotes fear of the uncertainty of life.
 
jeremyp said:
Yes, you were proved wrong in those discussions.
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Nope. The idea that bitcoin is a "zero sum game" never went beyond mere assertion.

jeremyp said:
BTC is not a commodity.
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By which definition do you go by? Why can't a digital asset be classified as a commodity?

jeremyp said:
And, as has been pointed out to you many times, with commodities, you have got the commodity. There's always a demand for gold, for example, to make things with, even if you have trouble selling it on the commodities market, you can sell it to jewellers and electronics manufacturers.
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This is plain nonsense. The price of gold is based almost purely on speculation and the only reason that most people buy gold bullion is so that they can find a bigger fool later on to sell it to at a higher price.
 
psionl0 said:
Why can't a digital asset be classified as a commodity?
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A commodity is a non-fungible economic good used in the production of other items. Bitcoin is neither an economic nor is it a material used in the production of other items. By definition, then, it's not a commodity.
 
lomiller said:
A commodity is a non-fungible economic good used in the production of other items.
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That is a very narrow definition. The Cambridge dictionary give a much more comprehensive definition:

SOCIAL STUDIES: anything that can be bought and sold.

STOCK MARKET, FINANCE: a substance or a product that can be traded in large quantities, such as oil, metals, grain, coffee, etc.

FINANCE: a financial product that can be traded.

NATURAL RESOURCES: a thing or a quality that is useful.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/commodity
 
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psionl0 said:
Nope. The idea that bitcoin is a "zero sum game" never went beyond mere assertion.


By which definition do you go by? Why can't a digital asset be classified as a commodity?


This is plain nonsense. The price of gold is based almost purely on speculation and the only reason that most people buy gold bullion is so that they can find a bigger fool later on to sell it to at a higher price.
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No. BTC is a zero sum game. You add up the wins and subtract the losses and they come to zero. That is the definition of zero sum. The clue is in the word zero.
 
lomiller said:
A commodity is a non-fungible economic good used in the production of other items. Bitcoin is neither an economic nor is it a material used in the production of other items. By definition, then, it's not a commodity.
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Commodities are fungible.

Other than that, this is the definition I am using. Psionl has come up with some other definitions but they are not relevant because the important point is that things like gold and frozen concentrated orange juice have the property of being useful to make stuff with.
 
jeremyp said:
CPsionl has come up with some other definitions but they are not relevant because the important point is that things like gold and frozen concentrated orange juice have the property of being useful to make stuff with.
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How many people make things from gold bullion?
 
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