Talk:Bitcoin

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edit request

include "The Trust Machine" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKwqNgG-Sv4) to list of films — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:1970:4E18:4B03:204D:C20C:37DF:42A4 (talk) 13:42, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Why? It is not from a reputable media outlet. Just some personal channel, a self-published source. Retimuko (talk) 17:45, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 21 August 2019

UK Tax In the UK, individuals are liable to pay Income Tax and National Insurance contributions when they receive crytpoassets and Capital Gains Tax when they dispose of them. There are a number of instances in which cryptoassets can be taxable including selling, exchanging, and giving away. Recent websites and apps have become available for individuals to generate their own tax returns for crypotassets. <link redacted> Hannahbitcoin (talk) 13:53, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

 Not done: Wikipedia generally doesn't include companies and websites, that haven't been covered in reliable, non-promotional sources first. Thank you for providing the UK gov source though. Maybe information from this source could be used somewhere in the article (although secondary sources are usually preferred). I'll leave this second point up to other editors to decide for future edits. GermanJoe (talk) 15:39, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

References

'Speculative bubble' in lead section?

The article has an entire subection devoted to characterizations of Bitcoin as a speculative bubble by a bunch of noted economists. Is there a good reason not to state this in the lead section? The lead exists to "summarize the most important points, including any prominent controversies". This seems like both an important point and a prominent controversy to me. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 01:05, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

It is currently summarized in the lede, with the lede saying: "Some noted economists, including several Nobel laureates, have criticized it as purely speculative." Jtbobwaysf (talk) 04:02, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure that quite conveys the nature of the criticism. A bubble is a specific phenomenon with implications of unsustainability, unlike speculation in general. if that many respected economists are calling Bitcoin a bubble, then we shouldn't be coy about saying so. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 05:42, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Are you proposing to add the word bubble after the word speculative? Or are you proposing to add additional sentence(s)? Jtbobwaysf (talk) 05:53, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

I think quoting them and noting the direct comparison to the tulip bubble is appropriate, given one editor already tried to whitewash the comparison on the basis that the quoted source didn't literally say the words "speculative bubble", just talked about speculative bubbles. I see the reference link has also been removed - David Gerard (talk) 07:15, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

I removed a quote from the lede here [1]. I felt getting into quotes in the lede was too much detail and this should be explored in the body. Bubbles and the opinions of various pundits have whole sections after all, in fact Cryptocurrency bubble has a whole article. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 07:25, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Yes, there's a whole section on the speculative bubble characterization. The main point(s) of that section should be summarized in the lead per WP:WEIGHT and MOS:LEAD. I propose we change the sentence: Some noted economists, including several Nobel laureates, have criticized it as purely speculative to: Some noted economists, including several Nobel laureates, have characterized it as a speculative bubble (criticized already appears in the first sentence of the third paragraph). Is there a reason this would be an inappropriate summary of the relevant contents? —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 07:53, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Are you suggesting we use bold in the article? Or are you just adding for emphasis here on the talk page? Jtbobwaysf (talk) 08:14, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

For emphasis, showing the exact words I suggest changing. Do you have an opinion on the proposal? —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 08:40, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

I am not opposed to the proposed wording. Use of bold in the article is not ok (I am still unclear if you are proposing bold in the article or not). Also better not to remove cited content, I think this 4 nobel content was discussed in the past on this talk page. There is also no need for additional summation, the sentence in the past also did a fine job of summarizing that there are notable people who state that bitcoin is in a bubble (its a pretty simple statement). Jtbobwaysf (talk) 19:42, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

To editor David Gerard: I removed the citation here, since it isn't just the four economists quoted in that one article who have spoken of a speculative bubble. I wanted to focus on summarizing the relevant section as a whole. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 08:46, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

POV forking?

In fact, the Bitcoin-as-bubble section could be greatly expanded, given that Cryptocurrency bubble contains more detailed criticism of Bitcoin than the Bitcoin article itself. As it currently exists, it's a WP:POVFORK for information that belongs here. I would suggest basically swapping the Bitcoin-as-bubble content between the two articles. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 14:39, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Just expand over at the Cryptocurrency bubble and link to it from Bitcoin. You can reduce the section content on this article. This bitcoin article is already too large and this article would only need 'why bitcoin is in a bubble independent of cryptocurrency as a whole' (if there are sources that explore that subject). Jtbobwaysf (talk) 19:42, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

That seems rather arbitrary. If Bitcoin is described as a bubble specifically, then the bulk of that content belongs in this article per WP:NPOVFACT, not a general cryptocurrency-bubble article. If you want to create a valid WP:SPINOFF article just about Bitcoin-as-a-bubble, that's different; however, it would raise definite suspicions of POV forking.

A better place for the expanded content might be Economics of bitcoin, which would entail moving the Bitcoin-as-bubble content of this article to the § Economics section. That would improve the WP:STRUCTURE of this page as well. What do others think? —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 00:21, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

My understanding is that this article covers the thing that is bitcoin (the software project), rather than the opinions of those of bitcoin (there must be many). I am only opposed to a large section in an already large article that gives excessive weight to either the promoters or the detractors of bitcoin (or both to maintain WP:WEIGHT). But maybe it would work fine as you point out to move it to economics of bitcoin, as that is likely a smaller article. Maybe others will comment as well. I am not suggesting to create a POV fork, we can always summarize the other article on the this article as well. We create other articles so the issue can be covered in greater depth. Right now the section looks a bit silly of a lot of people listed in bluelinks and the word bubble again and again (sometimes in quotes). There must be more than just x person says it is a bubble, and that could be covered in greater detail on sub-article (for example economics as you point out, or also the general cryptocurrency bubble article). Both choices would be fine, I think more in depth examination would be fine from my viewpoint. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 07:01, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

That's not what giving due weight means. Due weight means representing all significant viewpoints published in reliable sources. There must be many opinions about Bitcoin indeed; what of it? We're citing noted economists, central bankers, academics, and so on, not random bloggers or celebrities. In what way is that excessive weight?

WP:NPOV doesn't mean arbitrarily segregating facts and opinions in separate articles. Would you favor editing The English Patient (film) to only cover the thing that is The English Patient, i.e. the film project, rather than reception of the film, opinions of film critics, awards, etc.?

If there are WP:SIZE concerns, I see a lot of text that could be condensed and/or spun off. Why not work to trim the "History" section (a lot of which is WP:RAWDATA about price fluctuations), or "Legal status, tax and regulation", or create a spinoff article at Bitcoin mining, for instance? —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 02:17, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Where there is a spinoff article we should seek to maintain only a summary in the main article. Indeed there is too much price info without context.Jtbobwaysf (talk) 03:08, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Preserve

I might reduce a bit, assuming this content has already been moved over to Economics of Bitcoin, but in case it hasn't will put it here below

Bitcoin, along with other cryptocurrencies, has been described as an economic bubble by at least eight Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences laureates, including Robert Shiller, Joseph Stiglitz, and Richard Thaler. Noted Keynesian economist Paul Krugman has described bitcoin as "a bubble wrapped in techno-mysticism inside a cocoon of libertarian ideology", professor Nouriel Roubini of New York University has called bitcoin the "mother of all bubbles", and University of Chicago economist James Heckman has compared it to the 17th-century tulip mania. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has also described bitcoin as a "bubble"; the investors Warren Buffett and George Soros have respectively characterized it as a "mirage" and a "bubble"; while the business executives Jack Ma and Jamie Dimon have called it a "bubble" and a "fraud", respectively. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 03:09, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

References

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 18 September 2019

There are frequent helpful charts from Blockchain.info throughout the article for liquidity, mining, etc; however, they end at 2017. Can these be updated to extend to the current day? Also, I think there could be more coverage of the exchange and trading ecosystems. You could cover data providers and trading tools like Cryptowat.ch in a section. 2405:9800:B910:30E1:1DEC:5FB2:51AF:C94A (talk) 03:52, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

 Not done This template must be followed by a complete and specific description of the request, that is, specify what text should be removed and a verbatim copy of the text that should replace it. "Please change X" is not acceptable and will be rejected; the request must be of the form "please change X to Y". — xaosflux ^Talk 13:08, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Edit request: "Carbon Emissions" as new subsection within the chapter "Criticism"

Closely related to Bitcoin's energy consumption are the resulting carbon emissions, which cause increased concerns about Bitcoin’s environmental impact.

The difficulty of translating the energy consumption into carbon emissions lies in the decentralized nature of Bitcoin impeding the localization of miners to examine the electricity mix used. The results of recent studies analyzing Bitcoin's carbon footprint vary. A study published in Nature Climate Change in 2018 claims that Bitcoin “could alone produce enough CO2 emissions to push warming above 2 °C within less than three decades.” However, this analysis is subject to strong criticism as the underlying scenarios are considered as inadequate, leading to overestimations. According to a recent study, published in Joule in 2019, Bitcoin's energy consumption amounts to almost 46 TWh resulting in a carbon footprint of 23 MtCO2 which is comparable to the level of emissions of countries as Jordan and Sri Lanka or Kansas City. These estimates are supported by the International Energy Agency. FirstMover (talk) 09:04, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Interesting content. Other's thoughts? Jtbobwaysf (talk) 09:32, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Looks good to me, peer-reviewed academic sources too. I don't know of RSes making a countervailing case, most sources claiming this isn't a problem of note are blog posts and bitcoin think tank pieces - David Gerard (talk) 11:36, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

References

reserve currency

@Ladislav Mecir: how/where do you suggest to handle this [2]? In Bitcoin article or at Economics of Bitcoin. Thanks! Jtbobwaysf (talk) 18:40, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

I think that it belongs to the "Financial institutions" section. The source does not discuss whether bitcoin is a "reserve currency", though. It rather mentions that there is a question whether bitcoin can be used in reseves of a particular central bank. In general, central banks are not obliged to hold their reserves in currencies. Central banks can also hold securities or gold. Whether the specific central bank can also hold bitcoin in its reserves may depend on the legislative situation in the specific country and on the technical ability of the central bank to handle bitcoin in its reserves. Ladislav Mecir (talk) 00:55, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, added it. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 02:02, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

Update plots

Does anyone have access to non-copyrighted plots or data to update the current ones (from 2-3 years ago)? Saturnalia0 (talk) 03:39, 5 October 2019 (UTC)