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Ask HN: How many of you believe in Bitcoin and why?

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Re: Ask HN: How many of you believe in Bitcoin and why?

#21

Post by redox99 »

smackeyacky wrote: post #13

I got an awesome idea. I'm going to burn CPU cycles to make magic numbers that mean nothing to anybody except me and my buddies, based on an erudite sounding white paper that has plausible but nonsensical foundations that feed off conspiracy theories and a pile of libertarian ideals that can't possibly work. Next, I'm going to find some rubes to read it, and they will give me money to own those nonsensical numbers. T…

> an erudite sounding white paper that has plausible but nonsensical foundations

What is nonsensical about the white paper?

It is the first solution to the double spend problem, thus the first decentralized money system. Cryptographers had tried to create such a system for at least a decade, but no solution had been found before.

And it has been proven beyond a doubt that it works, and it's secure. It's kind of insane that the first solution to something is good enough to handle over 10 years later an almost 1 trillion market cap (thus a massive incentive to hack it / break it).

It has of course some big limitations, which is to be expected for the first solution to a problem. Namely, it's kind of a "brute force" solution, with this I mean the inefficient aspect in terms of energy usage. And it has very low throughput (TPS). It still is however, a breakthrough paper. It takes you from having no solution to a problem, to having a working solution.

The shame is how slowly it has progressed from there. It's been over 10 years and the efficiency part is only now being almost solved with ETH PoS. And the throughput part seems quite far away. Also the UX of most software that allows you to interact with cryptocurrency is still awful.

The bitcoin whitepaper is one of my favorite papers in fact. It is very approachable with minimal cryptography knowledge and only 9 pages long. And very simple, unlike more modern cryptocurrency papers.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you believe in Bitcoin and why?

#22

Post by jbjohns »

I don't think Bitcoin is a scam. It attracts lots of criminals of various forms due to the lack of regulation. I don't get the part about funding terrorism and illegal activities. Surely dollars are still the most useful currency for that?

I think digital currency is here to stay. Further, I think most people are wrong about it what it will mean. People seem to see it as some utopian freedom. What I see if a cash replacement that has traceability on a scale which was never possible before. And it's all public (at least for most of the coins). If your government said tomorrow that all your cash would be converted to a digital currency like bitcoin but all existing regulation would be in place then they could watch literally every cent you spend. Further, if it stayed public like bitcoin, so could advertisers. They wouldn't need to place like buttons all over the web to watch what you're doing. They could just watch your account. Using any kind of anonymisers would be made among the harshest of crimes so you cannot escape the observation.

I hear a lot of proponents saying digital currency is the way to reduce the power of government and the banks. I think, in the end, this will give both power on a scale never before dreamed.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you believe in Bitcoin and why?

#23

Post by smackeyacky »

redox99 wrote: post #21
smackeyacky wrote: post #13

I got an awesome idea. I'm going to burn CPU cycles to make magic numbers that mean nothing to anybody except me and my buddies, based on an erudite sounding white paper that has plausible but nonsensical foundations that feed off conspiracy theories and a pile of libertarian ideals that can't possibly work. Next, I'm going to find some rubes to read it, and they will give me money to own those nonsensical numbers. T…

> an erudite sounding white paper that has plausible but nonsensical foundations What is nonsensical about the white paper? It is the first solution to the double spend problem, thus the first decentralized money system. Cryptographers had tried to create such a system for at least a decade, but no solution had been found before. And it has been proven beyond a doubt that it works, and it's secure. It's kind of insan…

The crypto part is fine, not that I can claim to understand it.

The trustless model where the paper insists that irreversible transactions are the only acceptable form of financial settlement is hubris and ignorance.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you believe in Bitcoin and why?

#24

Post by hypertele-Xii »

Bitcoin is an energy-wasting competition masquerading as wealth. Bitcoin values are literally scores of proof for how much energy has been wasted "finding" and then trading it around, which wastes more energy.

But then people will also waste energy and throw real money into NFTs, hats, cosmetics, virtual spaceships... Bitcoin is just more of the same. An exploitation of some primitive human brain fart for percieved status in a rigged game.

Bitcoin's killer feature is speculation for the stupidity of people. What small cryptographic utility it might ever have is eclipsed by the illusion of currency and investment. It is a marketable enigma.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you believe in Bitcoin and why?

#25

Post by md2020 »

> As the price of Bitcoin increases, more people are attracted to it, which then drives its price even higher - creating a self-reinforcing upward spiral that is unsustainable and will eventually collapse. You could say this about housing and the stock market as well, and I don’t think those are scams. This is just price discovery. Also, the price of bitcoin has “collapsed” several times in its history, much like the stock market.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you believe in Bitcoin and why?

#26

Post by yucky »

>Bitcoin is a digital currency

Nope.

It's more accurate to understand it as a store of value, like gold or art or baseball cards. All of which only have value because other people will give you fiat currency in exchange for some.

If it makes you feel better, Bitcoin was likely created by the US Government (unless you believe in Satoshi/Santa). There is around $70 billion in bitcoin sitting unused in the original wallet somewhere, something only the US Government could resist burning through. Once you realize the origin myth and its effectiveness as a tool for destabilizing other currencies and extracting wealth out of unfriendly countries by bypassing their currency controls, you realize the US Government backs it, so why shouldn't you?

Re: Ask HN: How many of you believe in Bitcoin and why?

#28

Post by ilaksh »

stevep98 wrote: post #15
ilaksh wrote: post #8

Bitcoin is the digital equivalent of gold. (As long as people continue to use it as such). Advanced cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum and Algorand are more suitable for commerce. The basic concept of cryptocurrency, which sadly is generally missed because many people have turned it into a get-rich-scheme like everything else, is to *use math and computer science to reduce or eliminate cheating in databases that recor…

I agree with the digital gold analogy. The value of bitcoin and other blockchain currencies is solving the double-spending problem online. Gold and paper money solves it in the physical world. Gold because it’s dense and easy to check for forgeries (although gold is not used everyday now, is it). Paper money obviously has counterfeiting and serial numbers. But neither of these can be exchanged online. If we agree tha…

Take a look at Algorand. 1000+ TPS (going to 10000 within a few months), blocks in 4.5 seconds, fees less than one penny.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you believe in Bitcoin and why?

#29

Post by redox99 »

smackeyacky wrote: post #23
redox99 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an erudite sounding white paper that has plausible but nonsensical foundations What is nonsensical about the white paper? It is the first solution to the double spend problem, thus the first decentralized money system. Cryptographers had tried to create such a system for at least a decade, but no solution had been found before. And it has been proven beyond a doubt that it works, and it's secure. It's kind of insan…

The crypto part is fine, not that I can claim to understand it. The trustless model where the paper insists that irreversible transactions are the only acceptable form of financial settlement is hubris and ignorance.

> the paper insists that irreversible transactions are the only acceptable form of financial settlement

The paper never insists that irreversible transactions are the ONLY acceptable form of financial settlement. In fact it says "the system [financial institutions] works well enough for most transactions".

It points out that there is NO electronic system that allows no reversible transactions, as you can with cash. That's why it's titled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System". The author wanted something similar to cash, but electronic.

Besides that, discrediting a paper just for the introduction, which is just the opinion of the author regarding why they think such paper is interesting, is short sighted in my opinion.

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