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

Bitcoin is a Bubble

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 31 posts

Re: Bitcoin is a Bubble

#21

Post by aeternus »

philipwhiuk wrote: post #9
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why people still do this type of "X will die" predictions. You have nothing to gain by making these predictions, just like how everyone who predicted the fall of the Internet are now laughed upon. Furthermore, even if Bitcoin DOES go down, it's not like you'll be applauded for being an 'oracle' just because you predicted this either. Pretty much everyone who's risk-averse or doesn't understand the…

> Transaction fees are really the biggest issue right now, and there are tons of different approaches people are working on. Just like the Internet had hard time scaling in the early days I'm sure people will figure it out. "Yes, don't worry we'll just solve this extremely technically challenging problem." That's an article of faith.

Lightning network seems to be the leading solution. I've used it on the test net and it is fairly impressive.

Re: Bitcoin is a Bubble

#22

Post by aiCeivi9 »

0wing wrote: post #11

This author is either lying or has no idea how blockchains work. See: https://hackernoon.com/ten-years-in-nobody-has-come-up-with-... Blockchain will administer similar shocks to insurance, healthcare and all mass payment systems. Blockchains can do nothing useful for insurance and healthcare. Publicly accessible databases with auditing and security mechanisms (double-entry accounting, git, and merkle trees predate b…

> This author is either lying or has no idea how blockchains work.

Or just doesn't care and created whole article from older one mostly by replacing `cloud` by `blockchain`. I guess someone could update http://www.andrewdavidson.com/gibberish/ to generate such fluff pieces.

Re: Bitcoin is a Bubble

#23

Post by doots »

sschueller wrote: post #19
alew1 wrote: post #17

Whether or not the economics are right, this author doesn’t understand the technology: > To explain: essentially, “blocks” are segregated, vast bundles of data in permanent communication with each other so that each block knows what the content is in the rest of the chain. However, only the owner of a particular block has the digital key to access it. I know journalists need to simplify the technology, but those simp…

I wonder how many journalists don't understand what they are talking about and we think they do. I stopped reading the local paper after a tech article in my field was so wrong that I doubt other articles in fields I don't know anything about are factually correct.

"the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know."

Michael Crichton

Re: Bitcoin is a Bubble

#24

Post by wampwamp »

jgalt212 wrote: post #18
randomerr wrote: post #2

Bitcoin is going to drop to $300-600 within the next year: * There are only a limited number of coins out there so people are going to stop mining for them as he near that limit. You can see that now with fewer people buying ASIC and similar FPGA modules. * The transaction fees are getting be as great as the cost of a pizza transaction * Lost coins - There are millions of wallets out there with people exploring BitCo…

> There are only a limited number of coins out there Very true for BTC, but there an unlimited number of new cryptocurrencies (either competitors to BTC or ICOs). This is the inflation risk.

The risk/rate of inflation in cryptos is determined by the market's appetite for the fork/alt. Along with the even distribution of inflation (in the case of forks) vs the traditional "trickled-down" inflation makes it very different in practice.

Re: Bitcoin is a Bubble

#25

Post by cocktailpeanuts »

spyder wrote: post #14
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why people still do this type of "X will die" predictions. You have nothing to gain by making these predictions, just like how everyone who predicted the fall of the Internet are now laughed upon. Furthermore, even if Bitcoin DOES go down, it's not like you'll be applauded for being an 'oracle' just because you predicted this either. Pretty much everyone who's risk-averse or doesn't understand the…

Hah, nice comment recycling :) ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16028809 )

Wow that's so weird, what's going on? Did that guy just copy and paste my comment there?

I don't really care about getting credits for this comment (which by the way got downvoted tons) but it's still really weird that someone would copy and paste the same comment on the same thread.

Re: Bitcoin is a Bubble

#26

Post by cocktailpeanuts »

philipwhiuk wrote: post #9
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why people still do this type of "X will die" predictions. You have nothing to gain by making these predictions, just like how everyone who predicted the fall of the Internet are now laughed upon. Furthermore, even if Bitcoin DOES go down, it's not like you'll be applauded for being an 'oracle' just because you predicted this either. Pretty much everyone who's risk-averse or doesn't understand the…

> Transaction fees are really the biggest issue right now, and there are tons of different approaches people are working on. Just like the Internet had hard time scaling in the early days I'm sure people will figure it out. "Yes, don't worry we'll just solve this extremely technically challenging problem." That's an article of faith.

I never said "Yes don't worry". That's stupid, and exactly what Bitcoin devs are doing right now, which is why the price is going down.

My point was that these are extremely challenging problems but not unsolvable. If went back in time and asked anyone whether something like Bitcoin would work, everyone would have thought it was an "impossible" problem to solve. If you're reading HN, I assume you are somewhat technical. If so, it's much more productive to actually sit down to learn what the "extremely challenging" issue really is and see if you could come up with a solution? Bitcoin and cryptocurrency ecosystem is so early that if you mess around and if you're clever enough you will probably see tons of opportunities everywhere. If you can't, then it's either that you didn't understand the tech deeply enough or you're just incapable (which is fine, but most people belong to the former category)

Anyway aside from all that, my real point was how it's not wise to make predictions when you don't know how the technology actually works really well, which is what everyone from Jamie Dimon and my uber driver is doing. A lot of these people are intelligent in their own ways but they're just too lazy to actually study how it works but just like to babble on because that gives them the satisfaction of feeling like a smart person.

Re: Bitcoin is a Bubble

#27

Post by cocktailpeanuts »

babypistol wrote: post #10
wsc981 wrote: post #6

Bitcoin is going to grow to 50.000 - 100.000 USD within the next year: * The limit of coins will increase the value of each individual coin (deflation), while the USD's value will still inflate. For miners this doesn't have to be a problem in the long term, since money can still be earned on processing transactions. * The problems with high transaction fees and slow transaction times will hopefully be solved with the…

I don't understand why people still do this type of "X will grow" predictions. You have nothing to lose by making such predictions, just like how everyone who predicted the rise of tulips is now laughed upon. Furthermore, even if Bitcoin DOES go up, it's not like you'll be applauded for being an 'oracle' just because you predicted this either. Pretty much everyone who's invested in Bitcoin, hoping to get rich, and do…

Wow, is this s bot account? It looks exactly like my comment here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16028673 yet has different content.

I sort of hope this really is a bot account, that would be super impressive how you can take a paragraph and transform it into something else.

Re: Bitcoin is a Bubble

#28

Post by wsc981 »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #27
babypistol wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why people still do this type of "X will grow" predictions. You have nothing to lose by making such predictions, just like how everyone who predicted the rise of tulips is now laughed upon. Furthermore, even if Bitcoin DOES go up, it's not like you'll be applauded for being an 'oracle' just because you predicted this either. Pretty much everyone who's invested in Bitcoin, hoping to get rich, and do…

Wow, is this s bot account? It looks exactly like my comment here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16028673 yet has different content. I sort of hope this really is a bot account, that would be super impressive how you can take a paragraph and transform it into something else.

I think it was done manually. This guy probably noticed that my comment was a play on another comment in this topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16028553

:)

Re: Bitcoin is a Bubble

#29

Post by nkkollaw »

wsc981 wrote: post #28
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, is this s bot account? It looks exactly like my comment here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16028673 yet has different content. I sort of hope this really is a bot account, that would be super impressive how you can take a paragraph and transform it into something else.

I think it was done manually. This guy probably noticed that my comment was a play on another comment in this topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16028553 :)

This is amazing.

Re: Bitcoin is a Bubble

#30

Post by [deleted] »

spyder wrote: post #14
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why people still do this type of "X will die" predictions. You have nothing to gain by making these predictions, just like how everyone who predicted the fall of the Internet are now laughed upon. Furthermore, even if Bitcoin DOES go down, it's not like you'll be applauded for being an 'oracle' just because you predicted this either. Pretty much everyone who's risk-averse or doesn't understand the…

Hah, nice comment recycling :) ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16028809 )

[deleted]
Post reply on HN