Talk:Bitcoin

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Soapboxing by Smallbones

This edit is inappropriate for any number of reasons (WP:LEDE, WP:NPOV, etc.), but especially because of Smallbones' clear point of view expressed at User talk:Jimbo Wales#Thar she blows!. I suggest that Smallbones is no longer qualified to edit the article, as their edits are clearly soapboxing. Bradv 05:16, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

Smallbones, less pace, please........ That's a weirdly placed edit; to be mild. ∯WBG^converse 07:44, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

@MER-C: more of this that was supposed to be the point of the 1RR. Smallbones (talk · contribs) adds and Bradv (talk · contribs) reverts here [1]. Then Smallbones comes right back at it and then it is immediatley reverted by Power~enwiki (talk · contribs) here [2]. This is a continuation of the WP:TE & WP:SOAP covered in this discussion Talk:Bitcoin/Archive_34#My_Case_for_the_Current_Revision_of_the_Lede. The POV pushing by Smallbones here should stop. @Ladislav Mecir: did I get the correct 8 nobel diff discussion correct, or was it a different talk page discussion? I know I have seen this 8 nobel discussion here at least once before. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 14:18, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

Just to be clear Jtbobwaysf (talk · contribs), what level of evidence would you accept as being reasonable to say in the lede that "Eight Nobel laureates in economics have identified the bitcoin market as a speculative bubble"? If you say that no level of evidence would be acceptable, then you will have identified yourself as an inflexible ideologue or worse. The eight Nobelists clearly have identified it as such. And what could possibly be more important in a bitcoin article than knowing that the experts have identified it as a bubble?

I suppose it's time to bring up Harry Truman's old joke about wanting to have a one armed economist so that he won't shilly-shally saying "on the one hand this, but on the other hand that." There's no shilly-shallying among economists on this. Probably a more appropriate joke is the old "Economics is the only profession where you can put 3 experts in one room and come out with 5 different opinions." But there is near-unanimity among economists on the question of bitcoin.

It's not like the folks being quoted are talking outside their super-narrow spheres of expertise. Robert Shiller made the study of bubbles acceptable in economics and was awarded the Nobel Prize for it. And he's been consistently saying that bitcoin is a bubble for years - indeed he has used bitcoin a the prime example. Richard Thaler was awarded the Nobel for closely related work. Paul Krugman covers a broad area, mostly in marcroeconomics, but has written in bubble related areas, keeps most of his work closely tied to reality (practice as well as theory) and may be the best known current economist because of his New York Times column. IMHO Joseph Stiglitz is the best economist of his generation, covering a very broad range of economic topics, including areas related to bubbles. He has been very consistent in his views on bitcoin.

The other 4 Nobelists (other than Oliver Hart whose work relates to so-called "smart-contracts") might be viewed as being slightly out of their areas of specific expertise. They were apparently ambushed by a bitcoin questioner at a joint press conference. But remember that any Nobel laureate in economics needs to have a very broad knowledge of the field, and they answered to a man without hesitation that bitcoin is a bubble or a scam.

So do you want to ignore the reliable sources or give the impression in the lede that bitcoin is pretty much a normal market? Folks who choose the later should be ashamed of themselves now that bitcoin bubble has definitively burst. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:50, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

Your noting of your "IMHO" of why one economist is the best of his generation on this talk page is a WP:NOTFORUM issue. The point is that multiple editors are reverting your content that you have repeatedly WP:TE (added) over a span of months. Here again you continue to WP:BLUDGEON these talk pages about your opinions of who is the biggest and best nobel prize winning economist further exemplifies your WP:SOAP on this issue and you should be banned from these pages as Bradv suggested. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 05:56, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Another non-neutral soapbox edit here [3]. This needs to stop. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 15:26, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

The same POV pushing in the lede here [4] Jtbobwaysf (talk) 19:40, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

References

Price movements citing Coinbase

No point in just removing it - that starts to look like vandalism after a while. Similarly, the sentence about 2018 "In November prices fell about 35% to $4,166 and ended the year at about $3,690, down 72% for the year and down 81% from the all-time high." keeps on getting removed. Why? Well the numbers weren't exactly quoted except on graphs when I put them in on New Years Day. But they were certainly close enough. We can wait until somebody gives an "official" New Years Day price, but we know within say $50 where they are going to quote it. And that's not going to affect the calculations much at all, e.g. -73% might recalculate to -72% (more related to rounding than anything else) and -81% stays the same. So what's the big deal? Why do folks want to remove this? BTW, see WP:CALC. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 00:18, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

I find the following wrong with this:

- Commenting in Wikipedia voice about prices at arbitrary points in time based on raw data is original research. It is not just calculation, but judgement choosing particular points for comparison.

- Raw data is taken from Coinbase (in this case) - is it a reliable source? Prices on other exchanges can be different, sometimes significantly.

I believe we should not in general have any updates of price movements or market capitalization unless an independent reliable source can be cited stating such things explicitly.

I also believe that your revert of my revert is borderline edit war especially given the situation with general sanctions. Your desire to emphasize price drops and negative opinions (bubble, scam and so on) looks quite tendentious to me. Retimuko (talk) 01:02, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

January 1 is a traditional date used in summarizing prices and, well, just about everything. It is used several times already in the sections above it. "Bubble" is the standard view of bitcoin. Scam is pretty well accepted now as well. We should strive to include all notable points of view, especially the standard most accepted one. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 02:28, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

@Smallbones:

• "We can wait until somebody gives an "official" New Years Day price, but we know within say $50 where they are going to quote it."- this alone proves that your numbers are not WP:CALC but WP:CRYSTALBALL.
• Also, your evaluation is an unsourced evaluation of the bitcoin year 2018, not just some simple calculation like subtraction, addition or division of known numbers.
• Last but not least, your edits revert1 and revert2 are two reverts of the same material in less than two hours. As such, they constitute a clear violation of the community sanctions. I already ignored at least two other cases of sanction violations you committed before, but this is the last straw that broke the donkey's back for me. Ladislav Mecir (talk) 12:38, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

@MER-C: I think these edits violate the spirit of the Blockchain 1RR (adding identical content on Jan 01, Jan 03, and Jan 04 that is being reverted and opposed by multiple editors). There is no reason for this WP:TE, about such a minor issue, price (as there are any handfull of bitcoin is down x% that we editors can choose from).

• Content added by Smallbones Jan 01 here [5]
• Removed Jan 02 by Ladislav here [6]
• Re-added Jan 03 by Smallbones here [7]
• Removed by Retumiko Jan 03 here [8]
• Re-added by Smallbones on Jan 04 here [9].

In general, I too am opposed to this WP:SOAP and WP:RGW by Smallbones. There has historically been some price discussion in this article as well as others, but in general it should be limited as we would also limit endless dribble on price relating to MSFT, ORCL, AAPL, GOOG, etc. Clearly if there are not WP:RS's, then just delete it. If there are sources and it leads to excess WP:WEIGHT then we can also delete it. This WP:CALC explanation clearly doesn't hold water, as the editor is choosing dates, highs, lows, exchanges, etc and then trying to drive a POV. Far into WP:OR, wikilawyering behind CALC explanation that I found laughable when I first saw it. These edits are another example of the bias this editor has when he posted User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_232#Thar_she_blows!. In closing this editor might feel he wins either way, either he gets the content put into the article and/or he draws us editors into continued WP:NOTFORUM discussions (as clearly the Jimbo Wales was a forum post), aka another attempt to say "I told you so". These talk pages are now riddled with non-neutral edit issues relating to Smallbones, it is time this editor be banned from this category. Or we can go on with this round robin... Jtbobwaysf (talk) 19:52, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

We have another revert by Simonm223 (talk · contribs) with the following description "It takes a special sort of gumption on the part of pro-BTC POV editors to treat coinbase as an unreliable source when it shows their fantasy currency to be unreliable". In my view this edit summary shows non-neutral point of view: "fantasy currency" and "unreliable". To jump from price movements to "unreliable" really takes a biased view. Please read my objections to the disputed text above. Coinbase is clearly not an independent reliable source. In this case it only provides raw data, and one could argue that prices on other exchanges might be quite different, so why Coinbase? Drawing conclusions from raw data is original research. I am opposed in general to having all sorts of updates of market capitalization and prices not only in this article, but everywhere in Wikipedia if there is no independent reliable source stating such facts explicitly. Retimuko (talk) 17:08, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Disagree for the reasons stated by Smallbones and thanks for jumping at the opportunity to put my name on a scare list. Very welcoming of new editors. Simonm223 (talk) 17:14, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Smallbones did not state any coherent reasons to have prices mentioned without supporting RS. Vague statements that January 1 is a traditional date and +-$50 difference is not important are not arguments based on policy.

The notification about the special situation around this topic is not more than that, a notification. You chose to participate, so I notified you of the special circumstances. It does not imply that you did anything wrong. Retimuko (talk) 18:56, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

This is ridiculous. We have annual high and low prices for every other year, we certainly should have them for 2018 as well. And as the market price is a fairly easy-to-verify fact, people who are disputing this based on the quality of referencing are being tendentious; here's a CNBC article and here's the New York Post. power~enwiki (π, ν) 20:03, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

I think we all agree to have include prices, and the 2018 high and lows is an interesting and encyclopedic topic. I believe we are discussing the process to arrive at the prices we publish, rather than publishing of prices. When we have high quality RS like CNBC, why are we instead using an editor's 'roll your own' analysis of coinbase prices? Does this make sense? Jtbobwaysf (talk) 20:09, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Exaclty. No objection to summarizing RS. But how objecting to OR can be viewed tendentious? Retimuko (talk) 20:15, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

So can we say that we have consensus to remove the disputed original research and work on something based on sources like CNBC mentioned above? Retimuko (talk) 00:14, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Advertising bans

@Smallbones: I am recall you created Bitcoin#Advertising_bans, if I am wrong please forgive me. Is there anything in this section that refers to a bitcoin advertising ban? Or is this ban referring to cryptocurrency exchanges and/or other tokens, etc? I looked through and I can't find much that refers to a ban on bitcoin advertising. If this section is not related to bitcoin, it is going to get blanked or moved to Cryptocurrency or some other rightful home of the content (as the sources do seem to refer to cryptocurrency ad bans). In general, this section confounds common logic, in that nobody pay to would advertise bitcoin, as the free rider problem would negate any potential gains. Thanks! Jtbobwaysf (talk) 19:28, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Blanked, and content added below Jtbobwaysf (talk) 08:31, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Advertising bans

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency advertisements are banned on Facebook, Google, Twitter, Bing, Snapchat, LinkedIn, and MailChimp. Chinese internet platforms Baidu, Tencent, and Weibo have also prohibited bitcoin advertisements. The Japanese platform Line and the Russian platform Yandex have similar prohibitions.

References

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 31 January 2019

101.128.75.191 (talk) 10:58, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. – Jonesey95 (talk) 11:23, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Warning against investments into virtual currency IRAs

In the "Regulatory warnings" section there is a reference to a regulatory warning against investments into virtual currency IRAs. I do not think that investments into virtual currency IRAs are investments into bitcoin (a virtual currency IRA is not bitcoin), so I do not think the warning belongs to the article. Ladislav Mecir (talk) 07:21, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

Gosh, more unsourced 'warning' content. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 14:41, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

Bitcoin environmental impact

This article does have interesting criticism on the alleged environmental impact of Bitcoin, I think it should be added to the section on energy consumption: https://hackernoon.com/the-reports-of-bitcoin-environmental-damage-are-garbage-5a93d32c2d7 Initramfs (talk) 13:09, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

Circulating supply and explorer edit request on 27 February 2019

Change 4tochka (talk) 07:42, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. DannyS712 (talk) 07:49, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

Change | circulating_supply = ₿17,428,612 (as of 16 December 2018) to | circulating_supply = ₿17,560,496 (as of 27 February 2019) because circulation supply already changed

Change | block_explorer = www.blockchain.com to | block_explorer = bitaps.com

because blockchain.com do not correctly show all bitcoin addresses (P2WPKH and P2WSH is not recognized ) example: https://bitaps.com/bc1qwqdg6squsna38e46795at95yu9atm8azzmyvckulcc7kytlcckxswvvzej https://www.blockchain.com/ru/search?search=bc1qwqdg6squsna38e46795at95yu9atm8azzmyvckulcc7kytlcckxswvvzej

Regarding official bitcoin web site https://bitcoin.org/en/resources bitaps.com is approved by community

 Done Enivid (talk) 12:25, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

Sign Problem

Why are all bitcoin signs becoming squares???!!!