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Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

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Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

#51
post #28
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the greater problem that the total market cap of bitcoin is always going to be 22 million? In other words, the single bitcoin I own will always be worth 1/22M of the entire market cap, regardless of how much it's used. And I only own one. There are lost of people out there who owns thousands of bitcoins. 1000 bitcoins is 1/22k of the entire market cap. How could this be sustainable?

Compare this with the global economy. The number of Bitcoin users is still increasing, so the wealth is distributing. If you compare that with the global economy, the wealth is accumulating at a single point. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b8/Share_of_weal... I do however agree that's a problem. I also think that gold and precious metals are doing good, despite being (currently, essentially) limited.

You actually can’t compare bitcoin to gold and silver. The stock of gold and silver may appear constant,but th supply does actually grow. The supply grows in relation to their demand and current market factors. Bitco8n does have a hard limit. They’re not alike.

Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

#52
post #12

And what is the point? Does the price prove that bitcoin has not failed? To me, bitcoin died sometime in 2013 when mining became hopelessly centralised, breaking the economic and security models Satoshi had set forth. The bitcoin thereafter has been a soulness Frankenstein animated by a mixture of ego, greed, and hubris. I don't want to make any predictions, but when the crash comes it will be over before you knew it…

Trying to learn something about blockchain: the technology and its applications right now, means wading through masses of hype and parties anxious to 'get into it' before it's 'too late'. In healthcare IT the blockchain is hot right now. Government bureaus are pushing for adoption, care institute executives heard somewhere that this blockchain thing is the bee's knees and well suited for healthcare stuff like insuran…

Everyone is trapped chasing growth because that is what they are told to chase. What happens as a consequence has become almost academic these days. Root cause is the trap everyone is already in.

Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

#53
post #12

And what is the point? Does the price prove that bitcoin has not failed? To me, bitcoin died sometime in 2013 when mining became hopelessly centralised, breaking the economic and security models Satoshi had set forth. The bitcoin thereafter has been a soulness Frankenstein animated by a mixture of ego, greed, and hubris. I don't want to make any predictions, but when the crash comes it will be over before you knew it…

> And what is the point? Does the price prove that bitcoin has not failed? The price rising is validation for services on the periphery. Established services that can add a lot of utility for bitcoin. For example, the volatility problem is completely solved by CME Group and CBOE and the CFTC pursing and allowing hedging instruments on bitcoin. This opens up the market to many market participants, some of which are mu…

>The price rising is validation for services on the periphery.

Apart from brand recognition, which application is best conducted on the bitcoin ledger than every other alternative? Please don't say "Store of value".

>Established services that can add a lot of utility for bitcoin.

How would you go about doing it? Bitcoin was not designed to have side chains and tokens pegged all over it and there is a reason why the ICO fad universally chose ETH.

>There are market participants that will use it at a lower price, that will buy it at a lower price, and continue expanding the reach of it.

Again, which users? Bitcoin was able to recover before as there were significantly fewer competitors; now there is at least one for each use case.

Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you understand the Bitcoin security model? It has not been broken. And do you understand what "woo" means? Your hand wavey proclamations about Bitcoin fit the bill.

A good model would not allow wallet attack...

Wallets aren't part of Bitcoin - they're an implementation abstraction. The blockchain gives you unspent transaction outputs and a way to verify them and sign a script to unlock them.

The key management involved in a Bitcoin wallet faces the same problems and complications as any other implementation of crypto and user key management faces. Some have implemented it well, some have implemented it poorly.

Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

#55
post #12

And what is the point? Does the price prove that bitcoin has not failed? To me, bitcoin died sometime in 2013 when mining became hopelessly centralised, breaking the economic and security models Satoshi had set forth. The bitcoin thereafter has been a soulness Frankenstein animated by a mixture of ego, greed, and hubris. I don't want to make any predictions, but when the crash comes it will be over before you knew it…

Bitcoin can't die as it never succeeded. All the disingenuous claims made by early adopters have fallen through. Decentralization, control, anonymity, easy transactions, transactions costs, currency? How can something that has no use have value?

Proponents continue to build castles and waste electricity hoping people bite so they can profit. But the game is over.

Money is a social tool based on consensus, and today democracy and accountability, that has evolved with human societies however imperfect it may be. At least societies can exercise some control over governments.

Why would anyone give up this hard won rule of law and accountability to private individuals operating out of self interest peddling illusions about some imaginary 'freedom'?

Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

#56

Why does it seem like more and more sites are requesting permissions to send notifications...makes it hard to consider this a "trustworthy" site when the first thing you're trying to do is ask for permissions to send notifications.

That just caused me to block all notifications for all sites.

Use Chrome?

Then the settings are here: chrome://settings/content/notifications

Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

#57

Why does it seem like more and more sites are requesting permissions to send notifications...makes it hard to consider this a "trustworthy" site when the first thing you're trying to do is ask for permissions to send notifications.

It was nice when it was used sparingly by things like chat apps, but it's become too annoying; maybe the webmasters just don't understand they aren't the centre of their users' lives.

At least the latest version of Safari supports blocking all these requests.

Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

#58
post #17

A balanced view is that all the articles hold some substance. But the technology is more at threat through its own community than any external force. One question that I don't really understand is how can the total supply of BTC serve its own growth. If the market cap reaches the same value as gold for example - how long before one Satoshi becomes too large a divisible unit to be useful? Can you divide Satoshi?

Isn't the greater problem that the total market cap of bitcoin is always going to be 22 million? In other words, the single bitcoin I own will always be worth 1/22M of the entire market cap, regardless of how much it's used. And I only own one. There are lost of people out there who owns thousands of bitcoins. 1000 bitcoins is 1/22k of the entire market cap. How could this be sustainable?

Exactly. It looks like a Ponzi scheme for early miners to get rich.

Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

#59
Many people on HN are so negative in bitcoin that it seems that they are focused on the tree instead of the forest. This technology can solve the main problem human society faces and this is corruption. Human greed is what keeps bitcoin alive but this is not a bug, it is a feature.

Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

#60
post #36
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how the issue you're describing is specific to bitcoin. Consider that wealth in the real world also accumulates in a non gaussian distribution.

I think the comment is saying that in other currencies, if your currency's total value increases, usually more money is printed to keep the value reasonable. Even with other cryptocurrencies, Ripple for instance has a large unallocated holding of coins that they're meant to siphon out into the market to keep the value per coin under control. Whereas with bitcoin you can hold onto the same amount of money and if more…

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