Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far • Hacker News Board

Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

#71

Post by cm2187 » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 9:14 AM UTC

Freak_NL wrote: post #20

Laforet wrote: 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…

I think it is the perfect storm formed by the combination of:

- IT staff wanting to write "blockchain" on their CV (I have seen CVs driving technological choices so many times, hadoop used to store a 10MB csv file, etc)

- Some senior management reading in Newsweek that blockchain is the new hot thing and asking his CTO to give him blockchain stuff.

When such a storm forms, no objection from anyone in the organisation, no budget constraint or any form of rationality can stop it, a category 5 bullshit hurricane. A hammer looking for anything looking remotely close to a nail, even a finger.

Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

#72

Post by nikcub » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 9:14 AM UTC

Laforet wrote: 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…

Mining power was shown to be overrated by the failure of multiple miner driven or supported proposals and the success of the user-activated Segwit soft fork.

The idea of the UASF was that miners would be economically incentivized to follow user nodes signaling and then enforcing new rules - and that is exactly what happen.

It is also not out of the question to alter how blocks are mined in Bitcoin - Ethereum is doing that in an upcoming hard fork[0].

With Bitcoin it would be possible to not only introduce a new PoW with a soft-fork, or introduce multiple proof of work methods so that each has a difficulty target and no one PoW has a geographic, technological or regulatory advantage allowing it to achieve more than 100 / number_of_proofs_of_work% hashrate

[0] Ethereum is transition from proof-of-work to a combined proof-of-work/proof-of-stake with the Casper project https://github.com/ethereum/research/wiki/Casper-Version-1-I...

Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

#73

Post by Udik » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 9:15 AM UTC

aedron wrote: post #31

Laforet wrote: 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…

So annoying to see triumphant declarations of victory of bitcoin, based solely on the price increasing. Speaking as a bitcoin owner and proponent, there is zero (actually negative) market uptake of bitcoin as a payment platform (which I happen to believe is bitcoin's primary use case). This is because no work has gone into scaling up transaction throughput, which has predictably suffered as a result of increased main…

> there is zero (actually negative) market uptake of bitcoin as a payment platform ... This is because no work has gone into scaling up transaction throughput

No, or only partly so. The other, more fundamental reason why bitcoin will never be a payment platform, is that it doesn't behave as a currency, but as a commodity. The hard limit on the number of bitcoin is both the guarantee of its value and what makes it an intrinsically deflationary good. Its monstrous current price proves it, and it can only go up (almost) indefinitely or go bust.

With these characteristics, nobody will ever want to use it as a payment method. You don't want to pay with a bitcoin, when you know that in the future that same bitcoin will be worth n times its value today. If you have used bitcoins in the past for transactions- you might have paid 50 bitcoins for a book in 2011- I'm sure you're sorely regretting it now.

Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

#74

Post by speedplane » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 9:15 AM UTC

RachelF wrote: post #48

Freak_NL wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A lot of simple uses I see being put forward for blockchains could just as easily be done by a simple signing certificate. Perhaps, for a new generation, certs are too old fashioned, or many have never heard of their uses?

Most uses of blockchain I see have been put forward by very large companies... but large companies are the least likely to benefit. Blockchain gives you a decentralized source of trust. Large companies (e.g., banks, governments, etc.) specialize in providing a centralized source of trust.

I'd think that small banks/financial institutions would benefit far more than large companies. They can confidently share data with each other and enforce standards among themselves. Big companies, on the other hand, already have that trust through their reputation and detailed, legally enforceable contracts.

Nice example: say you wanna send $5M from the US to another country. Traditionally, you'd call a big US bank, send them the money b/c you trust them, and they'd send it to another large foreign bank b/c the US bank trusts the foreign one. There's a chain of trust based on the stature of the companies, and they charge a nice fee for that peace of mind. Blockchain can allow smaller companies to get into that game, but not entirely sure how it helps the big ones.

Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

#75

Post by rimliu » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 9:16 AM UTC

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #43

The reality is that bitcoin has the first mover advantage. Any other virtual currency has a big mountain to climb to catch up to it. 100 years from now bitcoin will be around since there is no one entity that defines it and control it. What the community has shown is that they are willing to adapt to the situation. Right now bitcoin has problems but as time moves the code will be modified. What's happening now is tha…

I've missed something, but bitcoin is not locked in my mind neither as currency nor as something valuable. Like a tool for speculation—sure.

Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

#76

Post by ckastner » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 9:16 AM UTC

dreit1 wrote: post #61

zizek23 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

Because this supposed "law and accountability" led to things like the 2008 financial crisis. Didn't seem like there was much accountability then, so why should I trust that money supply? I know exactly what is going to happen to the bitcoin money supply, it's written in the code. Furthermore, hard forks prove that if you don't like the network, then you can leave and retain value. You can't leave the dollar without g…

> Because this supposed "law and accountability" led to things like the 2008 financial crisis. Didn't seem like there was much accountability then, so why should I trust that money supply?

As someone working in the financial industry, the amount of regulations, internal audits, external audits, reporting requirements, etc. that financial institutions have to comply with is truly staggering.

Sure, they 2008 financial crisis demonstrated that all of this was no silver bullet, but I still consider that system many orders of magnitude more trustworthy than a system that allowed for the shit-show that was MTGOX, and other failed exchanges.

Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

#77

Post by novalis78 » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 9:17 AM UTC

aedron wrote: post #31

Laforet wrote: 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…

So annoying to see triumphant declarations of victory of bitcoin, based solely on the price increasing. Speaking as a bitcoin owner and proponent, there is zero (actually negative) market uptake of bitcoin as a payment platform (which I happen to believe is bitcoin's primary use case). This is because no work has gone into scaling up transaction throughput, which has predictably suffered as a result of increased main…

It clearly seems to solve a much bigger problem and hence the increase in price: a store of value in a time where the Feds balance sheet increases with the same velocity as Bitcoins price. On the other hand - it is still being used for payments. Though I am not a friend of the settlement layer idea myself. Time will tell how BCH will fare.

Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

#78

Post by dreit1 » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 9:17 AM UTC

aedron wrote: post #31

Laforet wrote: 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…

So annoying to see triumphant declarations of victory of bitcoin, based solely on the price increasing. Speaking as a bitcoin owner and proponent, there is zero (actually negative) market uptake of bitcoin as a payment platform (which I happen to believe is bitcoin's primary use case). This is because no work has gone into scaling up transaction throughput, which has predictably suffered as a result of increased main…

There is a sense of victory because millions of people view Bitcoin as a good place to park their money over fiat currency.

Unfortunately no one runs news stories on the growth of unique addresses in the bitcoin network

Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

#79

Post by shawabawa3 » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 9:22 AM UTC

vinchuco wrote: post #65

The sun has risen at least 166 times already, but it is not proof that the sun will rise tomorrow. My point is not to confirm or deny the bear or the bull, but to point out this is simply noise. When are market news reliable indicators of supply and demand?

> The sun has risen at least 166 times already, but it is not proof that the sun will rise tomorrow

Not proof, but it very strongly implies it

Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

#80

Post by joosters » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 9:23 AM UTC

dwaltrip wrote: post #38

Laforet wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All right, I will be a bit specific for your benefit: - There is a lot of wash trading going on with several exchanges, some of which has had serious accounting issues since 2016. When they fail, the fallout will be far more spectacular than that of the late MtGOX because many traders are heavily leveraged. - Upcoming Segwit2x hard fork potentially splitting the network. - Uncertainty with China where the majority of…

Fair enough, those are all good points. Do you have knowledge of wash trading and accounting issues at at any of the major USD exchanges? I know bitfinex was hacked last year (and paid everyone back?), and there have recently been some strange rumors around bitfinex and Tether, but that is all I have heard. And do you believe this crash/correction will be lethal? Or will Bitcoin "die" and rise again?

Bitfinex & Tether seem to be the two major suspects here (or is that just one? their ownership links are murky, to say the least)

https://twitter.com/bitfinexed single-mindedly covers the dodgy company. If there was some way of filtering their tweets to show just the linked articles and not all the comments/retweeting noise, you could find some good coverage of the issue.