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Ending Bitcoin Support

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Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#571

Post by kuschku »

raverbashing wrote: post #354
sydd wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money is serious business, why would anyone rely on a network that was released days ago? Also it defeats the main guarantee of Bitcoin - that everything can be trusted. Bitcoin would have had a great future if the big guys werent so greedy and sacrifised a little of their wealth for the benefit of the whole community. Since they refused to do so (=refusing any attempt to make BTC transfers faster and cheaper) the ne…

People (and service providers) just need to vote with their wallet Start accepting BCH, Dash, etc, if lightning works out great, go back to BTC, if not, the alternatives are there (Of course they can look at ETH, XRP, Monero, but accepting bitcoin forks is easier if the BTC infrastructure is already there)

But that doesn't work. When marketing a new product, you get at most one chance to do it right. If you fuck that up, you won't get a second chance.

No payment provider is going to take the same risks for BCH again that they took for BTC. No merchant, and also most consumers won't.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#572

Post by sumedh »

Jommi wrote: post #325
masklinn wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can sell your gold bar, and you can sell your private key. I see them as the same and no, I don't own Bitcoins. If there's no support network for your bitcoins, their value is 0, exactly. Even if you assume people stop caring for shiny imputrescible metals, its intrinsic property (of being shiny and imputrescible) pretty much ensures there will always be some demand for gold, and thus it will keep a non-zero pr…

But what does it matter which one has a larger "intrinsic value"? Both prices are determined more by speculation and group consciousness.

I think the parent comment is implying that in a worst case scenario bitcoin will be 0 but gold will still be greater than 0.

During such times you need an asset whose value will be greater than 0.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#573

Post by root_axis »

milcron wrote: post #563
WorldMaker wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The distinction between "BTC" and "BCH" (and "BTCS" and "BCD" and so on ad infinitum) is cultural convention. There's no inherent technical merit (or alchemical nature) to one ledger over all other contenders, it's entirely a state of mind of its users.

Yes and no. Once the blockchain forks, the distinction between all those coins is very technical. Coins from one ledger cannot be spent on another ledger. You're right though, cultural convention decides which blockchain is the "real" Bitcoin. Most people are using BTC at the moment, but Bitmain takes payment exclusively in BCH. This might seem like a semantic quibble, but I think it's important. There will only ever…

There is no intrinsic property that makes it "the real asset", it is a completely arbitrary distinction based on social coordination not on any fundamental property of the ledger.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#574

Post by josu »

Operyl wrote: post #413
eosrei wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW that is the goal of the Lightning Network on Bitcoin: https://lightning.network/

I keep seeing this brought up over months and months, but how close are we even to using it? Is the technology a thing yet? Or is it all white papers.

You can buy coffee https://twitter.com/alexbosworth/status/955870434230132736

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#575

Post by dane-pgp »

stale2002 wrote: post #324
0xcafecafe wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gold as a metal has an inherent value though. If not only for jewelry, it also has important uses in electronics. The value associated with bitcoin seems purely sentimental.

Dirt also has intrinsic value. If you don't have enough dirt, then you can't grow food and everyone dies. But why is dirt not valuable? Well, that's because the supply of dirt vastly outstrips demand. The same could happen for gold.

For completeness, it should also be pointed out that, in the future, the supply of usable (for growing food) dirt maybe be outstripped by demand, making it become more valuable than gold.

Actually, if the price started trending that way, I imagine other factors would have a bigger effect on the economy before it reached that stage.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#576

Post by nol13 »

vkou wrote: post #525
nol13 wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So all the spammers/scammers can't see what car you just bought and how much you paid for it and use it for spear phishing?

They can't see how much I paid for a car when I paid with a cheque either. This is not a problem that I, or 99% of human beings have. Again - what is the darknet supposed to protect me from?

Mainly referring to the credit card companies that will sell your data.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#577

Post by sumedh »

richardw wrote: post #260
0xcafecafe wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gold as a metal has an inherent value though. If not only for jewelry, it also has important uses in electronics. The value associated with bitcoin seems purely sentimental.

Gold is a greater-fool asset, just like Bitcoin. We buy it hoping a greater fool will pay us more for it later. Most of the value is what we ascribe to it. Close on 80% is used in jewelry. It doesn't actually make you money, there's no universal law that makes it more valuable over time. It's just stuff we like, same as art or classic cars or Bitcoin. We've just liked it for longer than those things, so we trust it m…

> We buy it hoping a greater fool will pay us more for it later.

Well not exactly, the largest consumer of gold are Indians and they buy gold jewellery to show affluence. Most of the jewellery is passed down generations.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#578

Post by dragonwriter »

Jommi wrote: post #325
masklinn wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can sell your gold bar, and you can sell your private key. I see them as the same and no, I don't own Bitcoins. If there's no support network for your bitcoins, their value is 0, exactly. Even if you assume people stop caring for shiny imputrescible metals, its intrinsic property (of being shiny and imputrescible) pretty much ensures there will always be some demand for gold, and thus it will keep a non-zero pr…

But what does it matter which one has a larger "intrinsic value"? Both prices are determined more by speculation and group consciousness.

> But what does it matter which one has a larger "intrinsic value"?

It matters a lot of part of the reason to invest in them is as a hedge against general collapse of social institutions.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#579

Post by bryanlarsen »

Aunche wrote: post #550
zanny wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the International perception of gold being valuable disappeared overnight (which... yeah, won't happen unless someone discovers legit alchemy magic) the difference between losing 90% of your value or 100% if it had no use outside of the speculation shouldn't be influencing almost anyones decision in what to invest in. All the other parameters (volatility, profitability, etc) are way more important than if you are…

My point is that gold can never lose 90% of its value because the majority of it is already used in luxury items and electronics. At worst, the total value of gold can only drop by the current amount that is being held in reserve or as investments.

Price is set at the margin. If half the demand for gold evaporated the price for gold would likely drop a lot more than 50%, probably more than 90%. When demand for gasoline went up by 2%, the price doubled.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#580

Post by chrisco255 »

stanmancan wrote: post #426
bparsons wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Bitcoin is the AOL of blockchain technology. It was a first mover, it had huge uptake and valuation, but in a few years (or perhaps already) someone is going to build a protocol that is capable of hundreds of thousands of secure transactions a second, and it will make Bitcoin look archaic.

There's a few different ones that have made huge jumps forward; RaiBlocks can apparently do around 7,000tx/s.

Is it doing that in production at decentralized scale?
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