Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bitcoin is none of the things it was supposed to be

theoutline.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 128 posts

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

#81

Post by netsharc »

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…

I think I read this too much from people saying bitcoin will work... "sure it sucks now, but it will have all the features you want in the future!", and hah, as you say, but no one is actually working on those features, and indeed 100 people probably have 100 different wishes and if they're a bitcoin-belieber they think bitcoin will get all those wishes.

Just like how Trump will make America great again, with "great" being defined differently in around 63 million heads.

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

#82

Post by y_u_no_rust »

lend000 wrote: post #54
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...

Painful to read. Paul Krugman is a laughing stock in the crypto-world, which he has been wrong about so confidently, so many times. As an aside, the US had active monetary policy for about a century, and it has enjoyed plenty of bubbles and crashes. Some of those were worsened by monetary policy (e.g. easy money in the early 1920's swapped to deflationary monetary policy in 1929 as soon as the easy money bubble poppe…

I've found economists on the whole to be very intelligent but narrow minded, hell look at Rubin

I respect Krugman but his words are not gospel even though they can be meaningful/insightful

money in general is evil

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

#83

Post by icedchai »

poopsmithe wrote: post #7

Remember how Coinbase, the San Francisco-based startup which raised more than $200 million in venture capital, put a freeze on my money? Whether it was out of incompetence or an attempt to save itself from selling at an inflated price (at one point, the price of Bitcoin was $3,000 higher on Coinbase than on other exchanges), this was exactly the kind of thing Bitcoin was supposed to prevent. Um no, I don't think so.…

Coinbase, and similar sites, may as well be Bitcoin for the average ("retail") investor. It's far too complicated, not to mention resource intensive, for the average Joe to set up and run his own node.

My uncle wants to "invest" in Bitcoin. He wants to trade it like a stock. You seriously think he's going to mess around with private keys and wallet pass phrases? Many technical people can barely handle that.

And, yes, for a lot of today's youth, Facebook is the internet experience. The Internet experience, for me, was telnet, gopher, and Usenet news. We're along way from those days.

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

#84

Post by jhiska »

DINKDINK wrote: post #64
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 i…

"Intellectual-yet-idiot" is remarkably like the phrase "educated stupid" from Time Cube fame.

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

#85

Post by jcranmer »

cdancette wrote: post #46
colorint wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banks can't print money either, and this isn't some "ackshually it's the Mint" thing: banks have the power to create debt. But this isn't special, because you and I also have the power to create debt. What makes a bank special is that debt is its business (so most of its operation concerns the management of debt), and much of its debt can be called on demand, and so we call banks' debts to us demand deposits. Fractio…

You can't really create debt with money that you don't have, as the banks do. You can't make 1000$ appear on my bank account and say " you now have a debt of 1000$ to me". You need to give me physical money. But bank can create this money they don't have.

The bank isn't creating that money. When you deposit $1000 in a bank account, you lose that $1000 and gain 1000 FunnyMonies instead. The bank can then turn around and give that $1000 to someone else. At the end of the day, there's only $1000 running around.

What makes it look different is that we treat 1000 FunnyMonies as if it were $1000. So instead of saying "there's $1000 and 1000 FunnyMonies" we say "there's $2000, oh look, the bank created money." But it hasn't, and when the difference really matters, and the bank doesn't have the ability to give you back $1000 for your 1000 FunnyMonies, that's when bad things happen.

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

#86

Post by jhiska »

emerged wrote: post #76

Is anyone else getting the same sense with Bitcoin as with Trump leading up to the election? Everywhere I go everyone has negative things to say, everyone is going on about how it's going to crash. They all seem like sensible arguments. But here we are, Bitcoin keeps following an exponential curve and Trump is president. The one thing I know for sure is there's an awfully noisy signal out there.

Correlation is not causation.

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

#87

Post by starlust2 »

analog31 wrote: post #40
dawhizkid wrote: post #4

The fact that the majority of people only trade/hold bitcoin to exchange for centralized currency i.e. USD tells you something, no?

The dollar remains the easiest rosetta stone for figuring out what you've got, i.e., what your bitcoins and other assets are worth. It will continue to be easier to use a more stable currency for that purpose, unless something goes wrong with it.

You're missing the point. Everyone just holds the currency because they treat it as an investment. In other words, they are speculating.

People invested, in both the financial and emotional sense, tell others to hold because that drives the price up more. The subculture's vernacular even includes "HODL", a joking way to tell someone to keep doing their part to drive prices up.

It's painfully obvious what people are doing.

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

#88

Post by jhiska »

mirimir wrote: post #65
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.

But then they'd spoil!

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

#89

Post by lend000 »

pseudonom- wrote: post #80
lend000 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Painful to read. Paul Krugman is a laughing stock in the crypto-world, which he has been wrong about so confidently, so many times. As an aside, the US had active monetary policy for about a century, and it has enjoyed plenty of bubbles and crashes. Some of those were worsened by monetary policy (e.g. easy money in the early 1920's swapped to deflationary monetary policy in 1929 as soon as the easy money bubble poppe…

Can you give an overview of or pointers to critiques? My prior is that Krugman is more likely to by correct than the average crypto person, even after adjusting for interest in and attention to crypto.

For a celebrated economist, Krugman has a poor grasp of certain facets of economics. It's probably a subconscious way of rectifying his political views, which many of us are guilty of.

In this case, he does not understand how Bitcoin can be a store of value, because it is not backed by a government. How come gold or any other commodity has value? Value it what the market decides, not the government. He obviously did not understand the intrinsic value the technology provides, which previous media of exchange do not provide, such as immutability and full control of funds. He is happy to pass judgment without understanding the technology.

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

#90

Post by jhiska »

arkades wrote: post #2

The article repeatedly quotes statements to the effect “this was supposed to show what a truly free market looks like. Instead, it’s a shitshow.” The word “instead” doesn’t belong there. Really.

Maybe we should call it anarcho-markets?
Post reply on HN