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Bitcoin is none of the things it was supposed to be

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Re: Bitcoin is none of the things it was supposed to be

#61

Post by Rebelgecko »

acchow wrote: post #44
AlexandrB wrote: post #41

Bitcoin seems like just another medium of exchange. Almost all the properties of bitcoin - decentralization, anonymity, worldwide acceptance - apply equally well to gold bullion. The one additional property bitcoin had was convenience. But as transaction costs increase this is becoming less true. Given the above, why would anyone expect bitcoin to behave differently than physical gold in the real world? The world of…

You can't send $50M of gold halfway around the world for $3.

You can't send $50 million of bitcoin with only $3 in transaction fees either

Re: Bitcoin is none of the things it was supposed to be

#62

Post by owenversteeg »

wereHamster wrote: post #52
owenversteeg wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lightning ultimately has to come into contact with Bitcoin at some point, unfortunately. Even if you just have one Bitcoin transaction a month, I'm paying $20/month at the current tx prices just to be able to use Bitcoin. $240/year. Does that sound anywhere near reasonable to you?

The goal is that there will be fewer BTC transactions once LN becomes widespread, especially if people or institutions open long-lived channels between each other (active for months, years, or even indefinitely). Then you'd only have to hit the BTC blockchain a few times a year, at most, and that's a level of transactions which the BTC blockchain can easily handle, even if the whole world population uses it for every…

Let's say "a few times a year" is once every two and a half months. Everyone who wanted to use Bitcoin would then have to pay about $100 a year to use it at today's rates. That's still ridiculous. And fees have increased mostly because the price increased. If people actually started using Bitcoin, the price would skyrocket and fees would rise even higher.

Re: Bitcoin is none of the things it was supposed to be

#63

Post by eric_h »

Lerc wrote: post #33
dawhizkid wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean universally accepted as payment for goods? The fact that it takes an hour+ for one transaction to be confirmed (i.e. behind ~6 blocks) seems like a huge UX problem for buyers/sellers. If I'm going to use bitcoin to buy a TV, I'm not going to wait around an hour for the merchant to say I'm good to go. And transaction fees are so high now that it makes no sense to use bitcoin for small transactions. Other i…

The problem is this perspective mixes levels of certainty that are not comparable. A trader can accept a transaction as soon as it shows up, even with zero confirmations. Doing so creates the risk of not actually receiving the payment, The circumstances under which this can happen are probably much rarer than the possibility of a credit-card transaction being reversed. You want the high certainty on large sums, For s…

> Doing so creates the risk of not actually receiving the payment, The circumstances under which this can happen are probably much rarer than the possibility of a credit-card transaction being reversed.

When everyone and their mother is using bitcoin as currency, I'd agree with this statement. For now, and for a reasonable short term timeline (~1-5 yrs?), I'd argue that the probability of an immediately accepted bitcoin transaction being a fraudulent one are much higher, simply because there are more opportunists as a percentage of total 'users' of bitcoin than there are in a more established market.

Of course most of the new money that's come into the bitcoin market (from the say ~$2k/BTC - $16k/BTC time period) isn't using it as a currency, they're speculating on it growing in value even more.

> It will be interesting to see where things stand 30 years from now.

It most certainly will. Personally, I don't think bitcoin is going to be the go-to cryptocurrency of 30 years from now, but who knows.

I missed my chance at being a bitcoin billionaire already(could have stashed away a few 1000s of bitcoin back when it was well under $1), so I'm not playing the speculation game anymore (I sold what I had at under $10k/BTC) - I hope everyone on here who is holding onto loads of BTC cashes out before it crashes, or that it doesn't crash and actually becomes useful currency! I'm just going to keep putting money into my 401k.

Re: Bitcoin is none of the things it was supposed to be

#64

Post by DINKDINK »

diego_moita wrote: post #49

The best criticism I've seen on Bitcoin is, by far, Paul Krugman's "Bitcoin is Evil" [1]. In essence: Bitcoin doesn't have "monetary policy" to regulate it's supply. That's why it is prone to speculative bubbles and very dangerous as money. [1] https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/28/bitcoin-is-evil...

> Bitcoin doesn't have "monetary policy" to regulate it's supply

Actually it has the best monetary policy: it's supply is inherently regulated and prescribed: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_supply. Intellectual-yet-idiot Krugman is a Kardashian of the economic's world. Popular because he is popular, nothing more.

"Economists" should take a note from the medical profession: First do no harm. AKA unless there is a extraordinarily compelling motivation, the best course of action is no action. We have spent the last 100 years in a system where the very base layer of our economy, the currency, was cooped for social engineering. "Wouldn't we all be better off if we made the cost of lending almost 0?" -> Housing bubble. If Wizard's of Oz are constantly mutating the value of money and lending the only people who can prosper are the Wizards (politicians) and the Bankers. The last 50 years of economic prosperity make that evident.

Re: Bitcoin is none of the things it was supposed to be

#65

Post by mirimir »

pc2g4d wrote: post #14

The high transaction fees are forcing Bitcoin in this direction. If buying a hamburger cost you $30 in fees on top of the $6 burger, you'd stop using dollars for everyday purchases, too. Seems we're stuck in this situation so long as the block size remains where it is. That artificially reduces the supply of transactions, forcing the price up. No matter how many miners there are competing for those transaction fees,…

> If buying a hamburger cost you $30 in fees on top of the $6 burger, you'd stop using dollars for everyday purchases, too.

Or maybe you'd buy a few month's worth of burgers.

Re: Bitcoin is none of the things it was supposed to be

#66

Post by QML »

pkulak wrote: post #18
pc2g4d wrote: post #14

The high transaction fees are forcing Bitcoin in this direction. If buying a hamburger cost you $30 in fees on top of the $6 burger, you'd stop using dollars for everyday purchases, too. Seems we're stuck in this situation so long as the block size remains where it is. That artificially reduces the supply of transactions, forcing the price up. No matter how many miners there are competing for those transaction fees,…

No one who owns BTC wants it used for transactions. They want it to be an investment and go up forever, so they'll never go with a fork that allows it. It's like home owners in a neighborhood locking out new construction so their own homes raise in value.

But that was the original goal of Bitcoin — the paper states specifically transaxtions. I personally found it interesting when I bought shoes over Overstock via BTC earlier this year; only problem was my phone didn’t have a default QR scanner.

Re: Bitcoin is none of the things it was supposed to be

#67

Post by QML »

cryptodogemoon wrote: post #37
vintageseltzer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Lightning Network is meant to address this: https://lightning.network/

Why bother attempting to patch on layers on top of BTC when it's already centralized with ASIC farms? Start fresh. Early adopters of BTC are trying to con new users into buying coins produced for minimal capital/computational work. The flaw in BTC is inherent to the malicious minting algorithm designed to harm new users. There's other cryptocurrencies who are far out pacing the BTC core team.

I agree: we need a faster settlement layer independent of how much the currency itself is worth; but let’s say we have have that network? How do taxes work? Everytime you transfer or pay for anything? That’s not going to work.

Re: Bitcoin is none of the things it was supposed to be

#68

Post by zaphar »

tylersmith wrote: post #28
pkulak wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one who owns BTC wants it used for transactions. They want it to be an investment and go up forever, so they'll never go with a fork that allows it. It's like home owners in a neighborhood locking out new construction so their own homes raise in value.

That's a pretty broad generalization. Many of us work very hard to make Bitcoin usable for day-to-day transactions.

Sometimes a broad generalization is generally applicable even if not always specifically applicable.

Re: Bitcoin is none of the things it was supposed to be

#69

Post by zbentley »

MBCook wrote: post #24
rossdavidh wrote: post #20

Allow me to make a farfetched analogy: Bitcoin is like Obamacare. Obamacare wasn't made perfect the first time; this is normal. The way you fix issues with complex legislation, is you have it passed by significant members of both parties, so that you can revisit it the next year and fix things. But, with no trust between parties, the Dems had to get everything right in one go, when they had both houses and the White…

The problem I see with that analogy is that Obamacare has been actively undermined at every step by the Tepublican party. Nothing like that is happening to Bitcoin. I think this was all inevitable. How could you make a new currency and not expect all the people who take advantage of monetary systems to move in? I’m not sure it’s preventable.

I think the undermining of Bitcoin's original promise by speculators is just as inevitable as Obamacare's undermining by conservatives. Both are driven by hype. Both are primarily driven by greed ("temporarily embarrassed millionaire" greed, in many cases). Both are aspirational. Both run counter to the cynical "humans will always subvert" narratives of their times.

That's not a judgement on either one. Just an observation of similarities. They're very different in many ways, too.

Re: Bitcoin is none of the things it was supposed to be

#70

Post by SamPatt »

pkulak wrote: post #18
pc2g4d wrote: post #14

The high transaction fees are forcing Bitcoin in this direction. If buying a hamburger cost you $30 in fees on top of the $6 burger, you'd stop using dollars for everyday purchases, too. Seems we're stuck in this situation so long as the block size remains where it is. That artificially reduces the supply of transactions, forcing the price up. No matter how many miners there are competing for those transaction fees,…

No one who owns BTC wants it used for transactions. They want it to be an investment and go up forever, so they'll never go with a fork that allows it. It's like home owners in a neighborhood locking out new construction so their own homes raise in value.

I own bitcoin (and have for nearly five years) and I want it to be spendable as a currency again.
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