The "true GDP" of the Bitcoin economy? \ stacker news ~bitcoin

pull down to refresh

1627 sats \ 20 comments \ @ls0 5 Jul 2023 bitcoin freebie

Hi, this is my first post here. I'm a CS graduate who has been fascinated with crypto(graphy/currency) and cipherpunk since I was in high school. As an adult, my only take on all of it is: Blockchains are too cool to be this useless.

Where I live, the shills and hodltards have crawled back into their holes, the techies and true believers seem to be back a little. I want to get back into caring about crypto an search for a dev job in this space. So when somebody asks me "what do you do", how do I answer them without making crypto sound like and end unto itself? I'd like to be able to answer: "Such and such amount of tangible goods and services are paid for with btc".

There's a meetup in a pub near me that tries to onboard people onto the lightning network (I think?) by letting you buy a coffee with lightning, sounds fun. I'd consider sats spent towards a cup of coffee a contributing towards the "true GDP" of the BTC economy. I wouldn't count: Block Rewards, NFTs, any money made in financial products.

When I think of "actual commerce" done Bitcoin, the following comes to mind:

Some VPS/VPN you can buy with btc
Darknet stuff
Anything that accepts bitpay-type services. In 2015, I bought a pizza with Bitcoin. Ouch.

Basically I'm trying to start up a discussion around the following question: How would you go about estimating the "true GDP" of btc?

view all related items

92 sats \ 5 replies \ @artdesignbySF 5 Jul 2023

Not telling you how many sats I earned doing graphic design work.. sorry.

0 sats \ 4 replies \ @ls0 OP 5 Jul 2023

I hope this question is not too random, but since you are a designer: Have midjourney et al impacted your business in any tangible way?

10 sats \ 3 replies \ @ek 5 Jul 2023

I think his business is built on top of Midjourney lol

2341 sats \ 2 replies \ @artdesignbySF 6 Sep 2023

Nah man. I mostly use Adobe software, for which I pay a hefty price every month. Midjourney is def. a powerful tool, but there is way more to design than just typing a prompt. I've not been replaced. Not yet! That day may come, sure, I will adapt.

You will still need someone who knows when to use RGB or CMYK color-schemes. A HEX value will give you different results depending what color space you are in. How many DPI does your print or press need for optimal results? etc. etc.

How does paper behave when bent/folded into a certain shape. etc..

10 sats \ 1 reply \ @ek 6 Sep 2023

lol, blast from the past

I hope my comment didn't come off as "it's just typing a prompt" :)

I just wanted to say that you leverage AI and make awesome things with it, so you're not replaced. I would say you already have adapted.

994 sats \ 0 replies \ @artdesignbySF 6 Sep 2023

:) All good my man :)

And thank you. It will become interesting when the tech, someday soon, will progress faster than our ability to keep up.

203 sats \ 3 replies \ @pillar 6 Jul 2023

Take a step back and ask yourself what is GDP really, regardless of currencies, systems and countries. You might find yourself realizing it might be a pointless metric.

We often confuse price with value, and consumption with human well-being.

By traditional means of accounting, I can manufacture a billion golden dildos in Vietnam and make the GDP of the country sky rocket.

Does this relate in any way to any kind of human progress or well-being?

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @BlokchainB 6 Jul 2023

Sounds like someone has read Principles of Economics

110 sats \ 1 reply \ @pillar 6 Jul 2023

Well, I've read it indeed.

But funny enough, I think this comic strip I saw a long time ago brings the same point in the smallest possible text:

https://i.redd.it/4dta6plnrucz.jpg

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @BlokchainB 6 Jul 2023

Exactly!!! I swear 500 years from now this period in history will be known as the dead money era

101 sats \ 0 replies \ @cyberpunk02 5 Jul 2023

A good thought, I think the best measure of this is transaction fees. These relate to economic activity as the more significant the economic benifit the more you are willing to pay in fees. "economic benifit" is very subjective so I'm sorry it ends up including intangibles like inscriptions. It's interesting because I think this measure can include the "prices trend to zero" Jeff booth growth?

30 sats \ 1 reply \ @TomK 5 Jul 2023

Impossible to estimate. Sorry and welcome

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @ls0 OP 6 Jul 2023

I wouldn't be so certain. Of course any estimate would have some (huge) error bar, but to be useful it would be enough to have some argument for why the error stays constant between the calculations for two different years.

Then one could say whether it increases/decreases, and over time build some model off of that.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @ek 6 Sep 2023

So when somebody asks me "what do you do", how do I answer them without making crypto sound like and end unto itself?

I would say by knowing why you want to work in this space and being able to articulate it without it sounding like meaningless set phrases. What's your drive, why do you not want to do anything else?

I wouldn't count: Block Rewards, NFTs, any money made in financial products.

Would you count zaps on SN?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @l0k18 6 Jul 2023

I'm building a "VPS/VPN/Darknet stuff" called Indranet. Aside from anonymity and hidden service routing, it potentially creates a simple mechanism for bandwidth-based paywalling, for access to services and/or data.

I am of the opinion there will be many ways to micro-monetise network services and data delivery as we go forward, and more again when we get Indra out the gate and into production. I'm sure the use for accessing premium grade Nostr relays, for example, or archivist services that don't throw anything away (think user-paid The Wayback Machine). And hidden vaults of all kinds, data and all kinds of keys.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @mikhael28 6 Jul 2023

True GDP is embarrassingly small. Too many people stacking sats, not spending sats.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Coinosphere 6 Jul 2023

It's Cypherpunk, not cipherpunk.
Blockchains are not inherently useless, but they've been around a long time (pre-computers, easily) and the only useful blockchain in all of history has been the bitcoin blockchain because it's got the majority of the miners on the planet working on its proof of work. All other proof of work, proof of stake, and proof of everything else blockchains are still quite useless in practice. Maybe one day they'll come up with a blockchain that can be secured in another way.
Calculating the 'true GDP' is about as likely as as finding out how much physical cash traded hands planet-wide yesterday. You just can't see the type of transaction on the blockchain to quantify any of it.

So to answer your question; I wouldn't try to estimate it.

But per community in places like El Salvador it would be easier. A much higher percentage of those transactions is for goods and services.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @OriginalSize 6 Jul 2023

Block rewards definitely count. Just like security guard wages.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Craze 5 Jul 2023

Even XMR is very much dominated on Darknet, I think these days it might be preferred more due to invisible blockchain.

Imo I would look lightning as a mode of payment for regukar transactions like for groceries, purchase and sale during regular life.

Whilst Bitcoin and Monero are more of a place to store money or possess large transactions. Though the banning of Xmr reduces its discussion in general public but over darker areas (expert with handling stuff which are illegal/banned) monero remains immortal, and so does our lovely Bitcoin.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Gjoni 5 Jul 2023

I don’t think anyone knows the answer to that, super hard to tell what is a payment for a good/service by just looking at on chain data