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Bitcoin Is Dead, Long Live Bitcoin

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Re: Bitcoin Is Dead, Long Live Bitcoin

#131

Post by such_a_casual »

pcmaffey wrote: post #87

1. I have no idea how to get Bitcoin. A quick search takes me to several exchanges that look like torrent sites for pirating shit. 2. Nor has anyone presented me a compelling reason to get bitcoin (other than the future). Off the top of my head, if a company offered me an account that would take care of my online transactions in a secure way using Bitcoin, I might be interested. Maybe I'd put a few hundred in it each…

Bitcoin is the only alternative to Paypal if you are an American doing international transactions.

Paypal is a terrible organization that has been setting itself up for a huge class action lawsuit for a while. The problem with Paypal is very simple. As a seller, you have absolutely no way of verifying that the buyer is the actual buyer, but you are held financially responsible if they are not. So what happens is people are constantly using stolen paypal accounts to make transactions. Paypal then reverses those transactions 24-48 hours later. Paypal refuses to give you any information up front about the buyer (the very same information that they use to verify that it was a stolen account after the fact, the very same information they use to flag the transaction and alert the real owner [but not the seller]), or any information on the criminal after the fact without a court order. So as a seller, there is no way to protect yourself against people using stolen paypal accounts. They are protected by the walled garden of paypal. Even though they have complete control over the security of their site and are the only party with the information required to verify whether an account is stolen, Paypal avoids the cost of their negligence and forces this cost on the helpless merchant. Paypal enables criminal activity and takes no financial responsibility for criminal use of their product. They don't even have the decency to share information about the person who committed a crime against you. Meanwhile, the merchant is left helpless. They have no way of getting the information necessary to verify the customer, no way of getting information on the criminal after the crime has taken place, and no other service to turn to because of the monopoly paypal has on international transactions for Americans.

No other services offer international transactions for Americans (maybe this has changed in the last couple years but I doubt it).

So if you are an American selling goods on the internet and you want to protect yourself against criminals, the only way to do it is to use Bitcoin. If you know of another way I'd love to hear it.

BTW: Bitcoin transactions are irreversible. A monopolist, like paypal, can't come in and just reverse the transaction after you've already sent the product to the customer.

Re: Bitcoin Is Dead, Long Live Bitcoin

#133

Post by dragontamer »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #129
Freak_NL wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems strange to consider a currency as a viable alternative for other currencies, when a sizeable chunk of the total available sum of it is owned by a single person or group simply because they came up with the system, and another large part is in the hands of speculators. There is nothing fair about a currency that is so volatile in value by design and is essentially speculative in nature. It is sad to see that…

You literally described the US dollar, maybe every currency.

Actually the US Dollar is inflationary, which means those who hoard US Dollars lose out in the long term. You lose approximately 2% to 3% depending on how well the Fed actually hits its benchmarks.

BTC on the other hand is inflationary, due to the (artificial) cap of 21 Million BTC.

In any case, inflationary vs deflationary is a moot point. Too much of either side is bad. The important part is price consistency, which everyone can agree is relatively fair. 2% to 3% inflation (loss of value) is much more consistent than anything that BTC has accomplished... with wild swings of 100% to 1000% on some years.

------

I'm intrigued by DOGEcoin, explicitly because it adopts an inflationary model with infinite supply. I think that sort of model is more fair in the long term, and certainly more fun.

Re: Bitcoin Is Dead, Long Live Bitcoin

#134

Post by smithkl42 »

vram22 wrote: post #120
nickbauman wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. Humans have complex social structures. Notice, too, how the sorts of animals humans domesticate are animals with a strong social hierarchy. This is key: to control the lot, you must subjugate the leader. Famously, Zebras were never domesticated because they lack this hierarchy.

Interesting, didn't know. But how about cats?

Cats have not been domesticated. They merely tolerate our insistence on feeding and sheltering them.

Re: Bitcoin Is Dead, Long Live Bitcoin

#135

Post by datapat »

StavrosK wrote: post #108
mabbo wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only real compelling reason anyone has these days to buy a bitcoin seems to be for use on darknet markets, mostly to buy drugs. The merits of those markets are wonderful to discuss, but as I don't really have a use for drugs in my life right now, I have no need for bitcoins.

I don't know, have you tried to buy plane tickets with a credit card? It takes me a solid half hour every time, between the "verified by Visa" crap, the merchant not accepting the card and some failure on their system. With Bitcoin, you tap the link and press "confirm". It's miles ahead of any other payment system I know, including cash (because you don't have to be in proximity of the recipient).

>I don't know, have you tried to buy plane tickets with a credit card? It takes me a solid half hour every time

Funny, because the times I have used Bitcoin it has taken a solid hour, or more, for the payment to 'complete' due to the confirmations required. This for pathetic, tiny payments (like $10 or so), When using a card for airline tickets, for thousands, it takes seconds.

Re: Bitcoin Is Dead, Long Live Bitcoin

#136

Post by davidgerard »

empath75 wrote: post #71
yc1010 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the problem is THAT DISCUSSION OF SOLUTIONS to bitcoin issues are being censored, with key people being banned from the usual discussion forums A decentralized currency where the development, mining and discussion is controlled by less than a dozen people which is a joke

It's sort of absurd that there's only two places to talk about bitcoin. There's no reason that a small cabal of people should have so much control over the flow of information about any serious asset.

Literally the only sensible discussion of Bitcoin on Reddit is /r/buttcoin.

Re: Bitcoin Is Dead, Long Live Bitcoin

#137

Post by yc1010 »

xorcist wrote: post #78
supster wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Visa fee of 1-3% is too expensive in the internet era. It made sense 50 years ago when cost of moving information was high, but now it's just rent seeking.

It's not just the fees, but the payment processors. You need a contract with them and you need to integrate with their systems at high cost. This is something you normally solve with yet another middleman, like a bank or Stripe. In contrast, Bitcoin is permissionless. Just install the software and receive payments just like anyone else. That's what something born in the Internet age looks like.

This, we went with Stripe before but apparently hosting is too high risk and (they claim) their banking partners did not want to do business with our little Irish startup. No such issues with bitcoin

Re: Bitcoin Is Dead, Long Live Bitcoin

#138

Post by Obi_Juan_Kenobi »

snowwrestler wrote: post #64
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #30

Back in 2009 when I was getting into bitcoin, it was widely described as a "stateless currency" and not just an alternative to Visa or credit cards. Having a background in economics, bitcoin looked to me like a truly revolutionary technology and if it was adopted en masse would change politics forever. The problem however is that a nation's currency is arguably the primary source of it's sovereignty. Whomever control…

> The problem however is that a nation's currency is arguably the primary source of it's sovereignty. The reverse is also true--any significant currency creates sovereignty by elevating the power of those with the greatest influence over that currency. In the case of Bitcoin, the "core" developers, in addition to the highest-volume miners, have been elevated to the sovereign position. Rather than a distributed statel…

That's great, I hadn't heard a term for that before, but that's exactly how I've been describing Bitcoin for a while. There's so much ideology in the space that governance is a toxic idea. Many like to ignore the reality of people coming together and having disagreements.

However, I wouldn't quite say that it describes Bitcoin, or rather, it only describes it up to this point. The real, ultimate strength, I think, would be a Bitcoin that has a market for governance. To wit, you'd have competing implementations, each of which would adopt some protocol changes, but perhaps not others, and each node and miner would be voting on the network (by participating, mining, etc.). Any majority would eventually create a longer fork and win out. This is what Gavin has been talking about for some time.

The real question is whether the network can withstand the constant possibility of forking, and some frequency of actual forks. I think it can, and would represent a dramatic shift of how Bitcoin operates. I see it as a bright new future and the ultimate in anti-fragile structure, while obviously others see it as a fundamental betrayal.

Re: Bitcoin Is Dead, Long Live Bitcoin

#139

Post by cmdkeen »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #109
ErikAugust wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, right. One may frame this whole "failed versus not failed" as a power struggle between two camps: a. Those who own a large stake in the original BitCoin - such as the developers, miners, venture capitalists, the Winklevoss Twins, etc. and b. Those who don't own a large stake in BitCoin currently, but wish to own a large stake in the dominant cryptocurrency. Wall Street... When you attack BitCoin on any grounds,…

Nah. People need to learn that you simply can't build a decentralized, egalitarian system on capitalist foundations.

Has anyone built a decentralized, egalitarian system on any foundation? Call be cynical but at some point you run into human nature, and we're not fundamentally decentralising or egalitarian.

Re: Bitcoin Is Dead, Long Live Bitcoin

#140

Post by weinzierl »

snowwrestler wrote: post #64
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #30

Back in 2009 when I was getting into bitcoin, it was widely described as a "stateless currency" and not just an alternative to Visa or credit cards. Having a background in economics, bitcoin looked to me like a truly revolutionary technology and if it was adopted en masse would change politics forever. The problem however is that a nation's currency is arguably the primary source of it's sovereignty. Whomever control…

> The problem however is that a nation's currency is arguably the primary source of it's sovereignty. The reverse is also true--any significant currency creates sovereignty by elevating the power of those with the greatest influence over that currency. In the case of Bitcoin, the "core" developers, in addition to the highest-volume miners, have been elevated to the sovereign position. Rather than a distributed statel…

> In the case of Bitcoin, the "core" developers, in addition to the highest-volume miners, have been elevated to the sovereign position.

I'm far from being a Bitcoin expert but from understanding: In the end Bitcoin is just a piece of Open Source software. Every user (including the miners) decides which version of the software (and ultimately which version of the blockchain) they like to use. Everyone can write his or her own version of a bitcoind and publish it.

The miners ultimately decide which blocks to accept so they have some special power but only as long as people use the same blockchain. The core devs have the power to persuade and influence the community but they can't force no one to use their client.

Bitcoin is more like a democracy where currently some citizens want to leave the current system and build their own democracy with different rules.

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