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Bitcoin's Golden Future

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Re: Bitcoin's Golden Future

#21

Post by dclowd9901 »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #12
imaginenore wrote: post #5

"Digital currencies have no fundamental value" That argument never made any sense to me. What's the fundamental value of $1? People assign value to all things based on how desirable they are (the demand). There are rare exceptions, like when a government ties their national currency to something like the dollar, but that immediately creates a black market, where it trades for its real value, and because of that, the…

The fundamental value of $1 is the full faith and credit of the United States Government and the economy of America. The fundamental value of cryptocurrencies is a shared agreement of value amongst investors. I imagine some snotty 14-year old would argue that there is no fundamental distinction between the two but that's not being economically serious.

Yep. This has been my problem with it since the beginning. A dollar isn't just a dollar. It's a monetary unit that is intrinsically tied into the power and faith of hundreds of millions of people in the idea of a country.

If people stopped believing in America, the dollar would go. How little would have to fail for Bitcoin to have the same problem. I've heard that if the person who owns the large stake in Bitcoin were to transact even one of their coins, all hell would break loose. That doesn't spell stability to me. Neither does "forking" the currency.

Re: Bitcoin's Golden Future

#22

Post by criddell »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #13
python1234 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This I can agree with after selling some code from bitcoins it can take hours before I get my coins. I'm not sure they can do anything about it at this point.

You'd probably see similar delays in banking if all banks had to record all their transactions in a central database. It's simply not a scalable system.

But Bitcoin only has a few hundred thousand transactions every day. What database can't handle that small number of transactions?

Re: Bitcoin's Golden Future

#23

Post by kpommerenke »

imaginenore wrote: post #5

"Digital currencies have no fundamental value" That argument never made any sense to me. What's the fundamental value of $1? People assign value to all things based on how desirable they are (the demand). There are rare exceptions, like when a government ties their national currency to something like the dollar, but that immediately creates a black market, where it trades for its real value, and because of that, the…

The fundamental value of $1 is $1, since it allows you to pay off $1 of your tax liability to the U.S. government.

Re: Bitcoin's Golden Future

#24

Post by murph37 »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #16
murph37 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a large concern for me. If cryptocurrencies begin to attract more users and widespread adoption, what is preventing a new coin that corrects Bitcoin's inefficiencies from ultimately gaining more users and superseding it? I would love to know your guy's thoughts.

Nothing, and it's actually easy to make the argument that that was the intent, in the open source, freedom of choice, no centralization, heck the powers kind of environments Bitcoin became popular through.

Very true. I guess a better question would be, why is Bitcoin able to maintain its market share, popularity, and lead now? Will it be able to maintain it moving forward?

Re: Bitcoin's Golden Future

#25

Post by granda »

VikingCoder wrote: post #11
delegate wrote: post #6

Bitcoin and other crypto require a well functioning internet infrastructure, otherwise it's just data on a hard-drive. Disconnect a country from the Internet (or filter the traffic) and you're forking the chain. Spend on both networks by buying other (unfiltered) crypto. There are states (even large ISPs) that can do that. Also, the first thing to go in case of global conflict is the global Internet. Countries will t…

"Crypto currencies will be useless in this case, losing all of their value." Pedantic nitpick - there are crytpocurrencies which are not distributed proof-of-work blockchains, and would not necessarily lose all of their value.

Can you go into more detail?

Re: Bitcoin's Golden Future

#26

Post by ballenf »

delegate wrote: post #6

Bitcoin and other crypto require a well functioning internet infrastructure, otherwise it's just data on a hard-drive. Disconnect a country from the Internet (or filter the traffic) and you're forking the chain. Spend on both networks by buying other (unfiltered) crypto. There are states (even large ISPs) that can do that. Also, the first thing to go in case of global conflict is the global Internet. Countries will t…

The fork concern is real, but the double-spend on both forks is less so. It would require the double-spender to have access to both networks. Which isn't that hard to see.

But, it wouldn't take too many parties having access to both networks to prevent the fork in the first place. The miners who control such things are very highly incentivized to keep their operation on the main or largest fork.

The alternative for the miners would be doing work on a fork that has the distinct risk of being worthless as soon as the network issues resolve.

There are very distinct risks. But ones that have "real world" parallels. Think bars of gold becoming less valuable than antibiotics now worth pennies. Or Marlboros. In the shit-hits-the-fan scenario, values of everything goes crazy not just cryptocurrencies. $1000 smartphones without electricity or networks become paperweights.

Re: Bitcoin's Golden Future

#27

Post by iainmerrick »

murph37 wrote: post #8
vocatus_gate wrote: post #2

The big mystery to me is whether Bitcoin is the Myspace or Facebook of digital currency. Only time will tell.

This is a large concern for me. If cryptocurrencies begin to attract more users and widespread adoption, what is preventing a new coin that corrects Bitcoin's inefficiencies from ultimately gaining more users and superseding it? I would love to know your guy's thoughts.

Why would that necessarily be a problem? If it's a form of money, to be exchanged for goods and services, why does the specific currency matter? For most people it could be just like switching from Francs to Euros, say -- a little disruptive in the short term but overall no big deal.

If a competitor is able to fix some of Bitcoin's serious problems, it deserves to win. Though I can understand if you're worried about competitors that lack some of Bitcoin's key properties.

Re: Bitcoin's Golden Future

#28

Post by hectorlorenzo »

1ba9115454 wrote: post #17
murph37 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a large concern for me. If cryptocurrencies begin to attract more users and widespread adoption, what is preventing a new coin that corrects Bitcoin's inefficiencies from ultimately gaining more users and superseding it? I would love to know your guy's thoughts.

There are plenty of coins already that are technically better than Bitcoin. It's just that Bitcoin has the network effect. So perhaps one day a new coin will overtake Bitcoin, but my guess is that the coin will need a very distinct advanatge to gain traction.

I think that you are right. I think that politics (in a broad term) will play a more important role than technology here. Right now the adoption of bitcoin is widespread, but still quite niche (technological people and investors).

I wonder what will drive adoption from the general public. And I wonder whether AGFAM will play any role in it.

Re: Bitcoin's Golden Future

#29

Post by iainmerrick »

1ba9115454 wrote: post #17
murph37 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a large concern for me. If cryptocurrencies begin to attract more users and widespread adoption, what is preventing a new coin that corrects Bitcoin's inefficiencies from ultimately gaining more users and superseding it? I would love to know your guy's thoughts.

There are plenty of coins already that are technically better than Bitcoin. It's just that Bitcoin has the network effect. So perhaps one day a new coin will overtake Bitcoin, but my guess is that the coin will need a very distinct advanatge to gain traction.

There are plenty of coins already that are technically better than Bitcoin.

Is there anything that fixes the wasteful mining process? To me that seems like a serious flaw in Bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin's Golden Future

#30

Post by ISL »

rugffgbv wrote: post #10
thecopy wrote: post #4

Transaction time and energy inefficiency makes Bitcoin's future not so golden, imo.

Not only it's slow, but transaction fees are ridiculously high. $4.3 currently. I go to shop and pay $0.5 for 2kg of potatoes (or a bottle of beer), and pay $4.3 fee, and wait 1 hour for confirmations?

If you make a consumer trade with Fidelity, the trading fee is $5.

For better or worse, Bitcoin has evolved into a financial-scale product, no longer something one would use to buy $0.50 of potatoes.

(P.S. $0.50 for 2kg of potatoes or a bottle of beer? both of those are a great deal)

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