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![[1039] The Currency Of The Future](/comics/2018-12-06-1039-the-currency-of-the-future.png "[1039] The Currency Of The Future")
This strip is good for Bitcoin.
Here is the obligatory link to our ongoing Kickstarter campaign for the Sandra and Woo: 10 Years anthology and the art book The Art of Sandra and Woo!
- Sign: Lemonade $1 – We accept Bitcoin, the currency of the future! – 1/1000 B * 0.20 – 0.30 – 0.39 – 0.35 – 0.42 – 0.71 – 0.60 – 0.84 – 0.78 – 0.46 – 0.60 – 0.48 – 0.52 – 0.70 – 0.86
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Sandra and Woo by Oliver Knörzer is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. See the About page for details.
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Ralph is pretty interested in bitcoin, huh?
It’s funny how a real world currency that isn’t tied to any value except what people accept for themselves what it’s worth is sooooo much more volatile than ISK in eve online.. which is basically the same but instead the values people tie it to aren’t real.
I think one ISK is worth half of what it was when I started playing around 2010 (considering how much ISK you need to buy basic minerals in the game), while bitcoin has had much more of a rollercoaster in 12 months than ISK had since.. probably since 2003.
There probably are examples of ingame currencies where the players determine the value that changed more than bitcoin.. probably.. didn’t really follow the gold stuff when Diablo 3 was new, maybe that.
@ Senjiu:
ISK was never intended as a real-world currency. PLEX on the other hand…
But, please, tell me how Bitcoin is different from tulips.
SeanR wrote:
I think he was saying that Bitcoin is so bad a currency ISK is better, and ISK is obviously horrible.
Now sure I understand. 0.001 Bitcoin is worth a fluctuating amount of “real” money. Dollars, I suppose.
But the most recently written numbers are going UP! Whereas Bitcoin (as of yesterday, which was the last time I looked) was in freefall. Barely worth more than the electricity it costs to “mine” it. Which means it’s really worth almost nothing and may soon collapse completely.
https://theoofy.com/25749/bitcoin-and-cryptocurrency-market-could-collapse-to-zero-dr-doom-says/
What’s the time-lag between you writing a script and the comic actually appearing?
@ Edda:
You misunderstand. The numbers written are the cost of the lemonade IN bitcoins. So as the value of bitcoin falls, the cost rises.
@ Senjiu: Actually… ISK became Real Money the moment they made PLEX tradeable.
The only reason ISK isn’t as volatile as BC is simply because EVE economy is nowadays controlled by a few big players/consortia who for all practical purposes control the “value” of ISK.
Of course, this never gets mentioned in the economic roundups by CCP….
This conversation is entirely to geeky for me to follow. Anyone who loses their shirt on Bitcoin gets no sympathy. You knew it was stupid from the beginning, Fred.
Finally, a handy explanation of inflation
Wow, he did all that in less than three minutes?
I am sure that bitcoin will be the currency of choice as soon as all diplomatic missions only communicate with Esperanto…
SeanR wrote:
Well, people speculating on Bitcoin and losing lots of money is something that actually happens, while the tulip speculation story is merely an urban legend.
So do they just throw the change they get in the bucket back there? How does that work exactly?
Anywho, you may remember from a while back this story of some guy getting hassled for ‘smuggling bitcoins’ past airline security. There’s a “Lol, haha, people are so stupid” write up of the incident by Forbes here
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/03/03/why-the-tsa-hassled-a-traveler-with-bitcoin-in-his-bag/
It’s WAAY back in 2014 before people were ‘hip to Bitcoin'(?) so they explain the joke like the average 8 year old didn’t already know what Bitcoins were.
The story sounds like one of those “funny thing you found on the Internet” things that you tell your parents about but when you look into it closer it turns out this guy is a literal anarchist. Like maybe anarchist / TSA interactions were always going to be problematic.
@ Paul:
I find it very depressing that interactions with TSA haven’t turned more people into anarchists.
Bitcoin, and other virtual coins I believe, do tend to ride the roller coaster.
That being said, I’d love to buy some lemonade from a cute girl.
@ Grikath:
Well, okay, but there’s no direct connection between ISK and PLEX. If suddenly everyone in the game decided that the price for one PLEX is worth 10 million ISK the ISK $ conversion would change drastically and therefore the value of ISK would change, since the $ isn’t really affected by an Internet Spaceship Economy.
My point was, that the eve economy looks to me to be way more stable than cryptocurrency economies where people sink money into as serious business and not for.. internet spaceships.. which are serious business too, I guess, according to the memes. Maybe I was wrong. 🙂
One of the reasons Bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies) are so inherently volatile is that they aren’t and never will be suited for use as general currencies but people try to use them as such. They simply can’t handle the number of transactions that would be needed for them to ever to replace traditional currencies. (And even if they could, the heat from the computer servers processing the transactions (and thereby mining cryptocurrency) would fry our planet.)
SeanR wrote:
After the crash, you can grow flowers from the tulip bulbs.
Wizard wrote:
Wait, into *anarchists*?! Not just progressives?!
No thanks. I’ll take the TSA over bandits, warlords, and fiefdoms any day.
Mechwarrior wrote:
The tulip bubble happened – the Dutch just weren’t so stupid to ruin their economy over flowers so after it crashed, they mostly just decided that it didn’t happen (reality is way more complicated, of course).
Senjiu wrote:
Hey, that’s how the dollar (and most other currencies) work, too. If people generally decide that it’s not worth anything, it’s not worth anything (that’s how it works even with a gold/silver standard – if people won’t trade gold for their stuff, gold’s not worth anything – but that’s more a matter of commodity trading).
The issue with bitcoin (which you don’t have with dollars or EVE currencies) is that most people who own it (or at least the people who own most of it) don’t see any real value in it. Unless you mine it (and to some extend even then), it’s just something you buy, not something you have to work towards. And to most who own bitcoin (or at least to those who own most bitcoin) it’s just something you can speculate with, not something with an intrinsic value (despite the investment needed to mine it). And they’re mostly right. Real world currencies as well as game currencies have an underlying economy strongly linked to them but bitcoin only has value insofar as people are willing to exchange it for goods, services or currency from a foreign (to it) economy.
Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain.
Also: When do you need blockchain? Decision models. Special emphasis on the first model listed.
@ Mechwarrior:
Not quite an urban legend, but not quite the profit/loss either since apparently it was just contracts and no money changed hands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania
The mistake is in pegging the price to the dollar. If you, for instance, pegged the price to the dollar, but only accepted Chinese Yuan, then the situation would be more or less the same. It’s not that the bitcoin is fluctuating relative to the dollar. It’s that the dollar is fluctuating relative to the bitcoin.
And if you want evidence, notice that all the other cryptocurrencies are remaining relatively stable vs the bitcoin, despite not having any international agreements to be pegged to each other (unlike fiat currencies).
627235 wrote:
Indeed, the fact that services like BitPay et al focus on pegging things to the dollar is part of the issue. In the early days of the BitCoin, there were indeed straight-trades. And sure, it was two pizza for 10,000BTC, or a bunch of trinkets and BitCoin memorabilia, but it was real straight-up trade. This sort of trade has, unfortunately, all but completely disappeared.
Funny :p
Cypto currencies are worthless garbage only speculators have any use for… it’s not actually functional as money in any real sense due to the instability of the value.
it’s just pigfucking stupidity that robs gamers of GPUs.
(i bloody hate people that have walls of graphics cards for this crap with a burning passion because that is literally shelves full of happiness denied to gamers who are instead forced to use inferior consoles like lowly peasants because of useless parasites that do no good what so ever to anyone!
they do not produce anything… they don’t render a service! it’s useless! i mean in theory it’s basically there to ensure secure transaction using part of that computing power… but mostly it’s just pissing away graphics cards electricity and effort on nothing making pretend money…
There is enough of that filth going on in the banking industry! we don’t need more human cockroaches!
God damn filthy vermin the lot of em! crypto miners and bankers! all parasites that take from others to enrich themselves by making fake money!
They are no better then money forgers! they aught to all be locked up for life!
@ qrez:
Hey, don’t forget, Bitcoin is great for criminals, too. Instant transactions that are hard to trace, nigh on impossible to tax, and render physical location mostly irrelevant–very handy for those on the run or in hiding.
And what’s the big deal about GPUs? There’s already over thirty years of games to play, and most of them work just fine on a computer built before Bitcoin’s invention. Which, incidentally, seems related to older games not being as heavy on grinding and micro-transactions. Retro gaming is win/win/win!
@ qrez:
I work in a cryptoeconomics startup that’s building a scalable distributed digital contact/computation platform, and I get paid in cryptocurrency. I agree that Bitcoin mostly fails at being a useful digital currency; the value mainly comes from grinding (usually with an ASIC, not a GPU; GPUs are used more by Ethereum miners), scarcity (currently about 80% of all Bitcoins ever have already been mined), being pseudonymously exchangeable online (the FBI can and has tracked money flow by just analyzing the blockchain, so it’s not anonymous, but at least you don’t have to trust a sketchy bank), and being the first (several newer cryptocurrencies are way better, technologically). I know Bitcoin’s “proof of work” mining/security scheme is stupidly inefficient, but the hashpower of mining does provide legitimate transaction security, making trades irreversible. There are other schemes (proof of stake, etc) that provide similar security without burning that 1% of traditional bank/finance electricity use, and similar schemes are actually being used by big banks to save resources when exchanging between themselves.
My gaming desktop had a dying 5 years old graphics card a year ago, but I couldn’t even find a similar-powered replacement at a reasonable price, so I actually did a downgrade. I feel your frustration. We’re working on better replacements. Just don’t expect them to be called “Bitcoin”.
@ Crypto Worker:
Just curious, is you salary a fixed Bitcoin amount, or a fixed USD (or your local currency, if different) converted to Bitcoin at the exchange rate on each Payday?
If it’s the first, the financial workings of your company be cray-cray, since they don’t know (at all) how much they need to pay their employees each month/
If it’s the second, then you aren’t getting paid in Bitcoin. You are getting paid in USD that someone just converts to Bitcoin before giving you – something that you easily could’ve done yourself.
@ Ilya:
It’s the second. But there’s still enough volatility that I’ve had my pay change a bunch between receiving and selling it. And yes, the first would be pretty crazy, for all the reasons why we’re building something better.
SlugFiller wrote:
I didn’t kill him, Your Honor. It’s just so happens that he runs to the path of the knife I swinged intentionally.
@ SeanR: Excellent knowledge of history.
If they accept bitcoin, Sandra’s going to lose a lot of money very fast.
You know what novil? You should make a stripavoutzpey getting a girlfriend.
@ SeanR:
The difficulty in making new bitcoins limits supply.
Not to say the bitcoin market isn’t still far too volatile.
Narbom wrote:
I know you meant that sarcastically, but that’s a defense that’s been used and worked. If you were just holding a knife, i.e. chopping vegetables or meat, and someone jumped onto it, you’re not going to be found guilty of manslaughter.
Now there’s some detail for you! I just realized that the line delineating the rear of the table is noticeably lighter where it passes behind those three glasses sitting on the table. Nice job, Powree!
Novil I am begging you. BEGGING you. To make a story about Zoey getting a girlfriend. I HAVE WAITED LONG ENOUGH.
Other currency does this too. You don’t see it because you are swimming in a sea of acceptance of that currency and never compare it to anything else.
A had a bit coin once. I dropped it on the floor, and the dog chewed it before spitting it out. But I had no problem using it at the bakery.