Bitcoin is a cult. Altcoins are cargo cults.
Altcoins are exactly the same
That's what the Papua New Guineans thought.
Bitcoin is a Cult
61–70 of 232 posts
Re: Bitcoin is a Cult
#62r/bitcoin comes to mind whenever I think of the words "Bitcoin" and "cult" in the same sentence.
If you want to read an interesting story read this. https://old.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/6rxw7k/info...
Good overview, a lot of stuff I didn’t know.
What I do know and have known is that anyone that believes the “it’s decentralized” part about any cryptocommodity is a damn fool. The database might be but nothing else. There are at any time a dozen people that could utterly destroy bitcoin with some well placed shenanigans.
Re: Bitcoin is a Cult
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any data to back that up ? I know anecdotal, but I can buy beers, taxi & coffee with crypto which I could not 9 years ago and I see quite a lot of ATMs appearing; NL/UK/JP/HK. I think the main point is that I can get a coffee with crypto, which is an important milestone.
Maybe it’s because I’m European, but 8 years ago I could buy coffee with crypto in both Copenhagen and Berlin and today I can’t.
Because it’s not a currency anymore it’s a commodity.
That first time you had to explain to your mom or aunt what Bitcoin is becsuse they saw it on TV news or radio - that’s the time it became too risky for retailers to trust it.
Re: Bitcoin is a Cult
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s media sensationalism. BTC is not remotely anonymous and is useless as a tax evasion mechanism. Your money still has to go through someone to turn into BTC, and that’s the same as any other money laundering operation. Once their books are audited, your “safe haven” is worth nothing.
Vice has a good video on drug dealers lining up to use a Bitcoin ATM every day somewhere in an American ghetto. Bitcoin is 100% about drug dealing, gambling, and tax avoidance. You would have to be a total moron to go through all the hoops to use it otherwise. Its kinda like running desktop linux in that way.
> You would have to be a total moron to go through all the hoops to use it otherwise. Its kinda like running desktop linux in that way.
So, what, you'd have to be a total moron to go through the hoops of installing Linux as well? Do you think before you comment?
Your 100% figure is wrong given that I, at least, don't match any of your description. You can't go around claiming this kind of nonsense.
Re: Bitcoin is a Cult
#65I think people have largely missed the point of the article. This is specifically in relation to a "magic hash" on a block that was mined on June 19, 2018 with the hash: 00000000000000000021e800c1e8df51b22c1588e5a624bea17e9faa34b2dc4a The leading zeros are the "proof-of-work". The bitcoin mining algorithm tries various nonces and generates many hashes until it finds one with (currently) 18 leading zeros. Surprisingly…
Great comment. My counter for people that may have misunderstood it before your post is that... if these people think 3% and “magic” occurrences of leetspeak are something note these are people I want to keep myself and my money far away from.
> if these people think 3% and “magic” occurrences of leetspeak are something note these are people I want to keep myself and my money far away from.
The same thing happens with "interesting" serial numbers on money, though. This seems like an equivalent example.
To be more explicit: I don't think that mistaken beliefs/superstition on the part of users should necessarily reflect on the usability or practicality of anything they use.
Re: Bitcoin is a Cult
#66I think people have largely missed the point of the article. This is specifically in relation to a "magic hash" on a block that was mined on June 19, 2018 with the hash: 00000000000000000021e800c1e8df51b22c1588e5a624bea17e9faa34b2dc4a The leading zeros are the "proof-of-work". The bitcoin mining algorithm tries various nonces and generates many hashes until it finds one with (currently) 18 leading zeros. Surprisingly…
In this type of scenario (be it bitcoin hashes, serial numbers elsewhere, etc), the real question is how many possible "vanity" hashes exist. The odds of this specific one are not interesting, it's the space of all of them that is.
It's pretty much always infeasible to enumerate that space, but generally speaking there are a looooot of things that could qualify as special-looking enough to be included. All forms of english, foreign languages, language abbreviations, leet-speak, slang, pop-culture-inspired references, etc.
The odds of randomly tripping across something "special" eventually are pretty good. And bonus points if eventually one of those special coincidences is vaguely time-correlated with a real-world version of itself (eg, the number happens to be in the news, the slang word was recently used by a celebrity, etc).
Re: Bitcoin is a Cult
#67I've thinking of how many of the communities and belief systems on the internet are very similar to religions.
I've started calling conspiracy theories the "religions of the internet" to make a point to my dad whose understandable distrust of the mainstream narrative has lead him to give more trust to the anti-establishment churches like https://themindunleashed.com that publish conspiracy theories, badly informed opinions on real science news, and pseudo-science mixed in with some real science news.
His reaction to mistrusting the mainstream was to shift his trust somewhere easily identifiable as untrustworthy (to someone educated in the sciences) atleast partly because it acknowledges his mistrust of the mainstream and presents the only-mostly-wrong ideas in a fleshed out manner and authoritative tone.
Some observations and layman speculation:
I've just started reading Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harrari which suggests that there is a strong biological tendency toward adopting unsubstantiated beliefs to enable human cooperation at scale he called them collective myths.
I've also once met a sincere flat earther, but I suspect his ideas arose from doing too much LSD before encountering the idea of tracing his beliefs to their root axioms.
Re: Bitcoin is a Cult
#68Bitcoin is a cult. Altcoins are cargo cults.
Altcoins are exactly the same
I think that's the idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_programming
> Cargo cult programming is a style of computer programming characterized by the ritual inclusion of code or program structures that serve no real purpose.
> Cargo cult programming can also refer to the practice of applying a design pattern or coding style blindly without understanding the reasons behind that design principle.
Re: Bitcoin is a Cult
#69I think people have largely missed the point of the article. This is specifically in relation to a "magic hash" on a block that was mined on June 19, 2018 with the hash: 00000000000000000021e800c1e8df51b22c1588e5a624bea17e9faa34b2dc4a The leading zeros are the "proof-of-work". The bitcoin mining algorithm tries various nonces and generates many hashes until it finds one with (currently) 18 leading zeros. Surprisingly…
The one that actually was quite weird was a block that happened fora fork. I can't remember the details unfortunately but the block had in it the number of the BIP. That was weird because it wasn't just a block with that number but that exact block.
Maybe someone else remembers the details.
Re: Bitcoin is a Cult
#70I think people have largely missed the point of the article. This is specifically in relation to a "magic hash" on a block that was mined on June 19, 2018 with the hash: 00000000000000000021e800c1e8df51b22c1588e5a624bea17e9faa34b2dc4a The leading zeros are the "proof-of-work". The bitcoin mining algorithm tries various nonces and generates many hashes until it finds one with (currently) 18 leading zeros. Surprisingly…
Great comment. My counter for people that may have misunderstood it before your post is that... if these people think 3% and “magic” occurrences of leetspeak are something note these are people I want to keep myself and my money far away from.
The leetspeak part was chosen by the author of the other article as a proof-of-concept. However, it seems like other people reported on by both articles' authors were serious in their excitement or perplexity about the "21e800".