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Bitcoin is a Cult

adamcaudill.com

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Re: Bitcoin is a Cult

#111

Post by awt »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #99
awt wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What it was "meant to be" hardly matters. What it actually is is more important than the misrepresentations presented by various misinformed parties.

> What it actually is is more important than the misrepresentations presented by various misinformed parties Fair enough. Government bonds let countries deficit spend. They are also a stable store of value. These attributes make them useful. Bitcoin is neither of these. Like government bonds, it does not behave like money.

Government bonds are stable if you ignore tail risk. Governments tend to collapse eventually, at which point your bonds are not a great store of value.

Bitcoin is however similar to a government bond in that it a) has value, b) is not directly useful for consumer transactions. Also, I dunno that behaving like money can be put in such stark binary terms.

Re: Bitcoin is a Cult

#112

Post by biql »

Synaesthesia wrote: post #51

When I first got into bitcoin I thought it could be a wonderful alternative to the current monetary system, I especially hoped it would be more equitably shares. Unfortunately it’s turned out to be as unequally shared as our current wealth is, if not more. Perhaps some kind of coin where everybody in the world is issued the same amount or something.

As along as everything else is unequally shared in the world, distribution of coins will merely reflect that as it's a medium of exchange. Even if material wealth was reset and equally redistributed, the same processes that caused it to be unequally distributed in the first place, will apply again.

Re: Bitcoin is a Cult

#113

Post by simias »

Obi_Juan_Kenobi wrote: post #31

There is, without a doubt, a Bitcoin cult. Or more generally, crypto-currency cults. The headline reads like it's only a cult, which isn't the case. Even the most critical observer must concede that these distributed networks are novel and interesting. The farther you move from social media, the less cult-like things get. The best discussion remains on listservs, and there is a lot of interesting and substantive disc…

>Even the most critical observer must concede that these distributed networks are novel and interesting.

Frankly that's besides the point these days. Lurk in cryptocurrency subreddits for a while and see that hardly anybody talks about the technology anymore, it's all about "memes" and very dubious projections. Things like this for instance: https://i.redditmedia.com/51566F6-xO0zIBDD7HzYRZyEGhDpMqQpAr... (fresh off the bitcoin subreddit front page).

I mean, look at TFA, part of the confusion stems from the fact that many people in the community simply didn't know how PoW functions (or even what it is in the first place). It's not about technology anymore, it reads like a Multi-Level Marketing forum. Nobody cares about what it is, they just want to get rich.

Re: Bitcoin is a Cult

#114

Post by nope96 »

shiado wrote: post #44
sidkhanooja wrote: post #17

r/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...

This is a completely, outrageously false version of events, and it is very frustrating trying to debunk it for non-crytpo geeks who haven't followed things.

There is a group of "altcoin" (ICO and non-Bitcoin coins) investors who have put together a terrific social media team and spread nonsense like this. They run a "The_Donald"-esq subreddit called /r/btc who's head moderator is Roger Ver, convicted felon (sold explosives online and renounced his US citizenship). Somehow Roger Ver bought the domain Bitcoin.com, and has been using it to promote a different coin, "Bitcoin Cash", and outright saying it "is Bitcoin". Of course He's heavily invested in sites like Shapeshift which allow you to buy altcoins... and I assume links like this (posted by"singularity87" who is a top /r/btc poster) are designed to spook people into switching to ETH, Bitcoin Cash, etc. It's bizarre nonsense.

Re: Bitcoin is a Cult

#115

Post by pdpi »

codetrotter wrote: post #109
jenga22 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of things are cults and it doesn't have to do much with social media or the behaviors he is outlining. Apple - You can argue Apple, the hardware company, is a cult. The fans are rabid in their support for the company. Often the discussions are not at all civil and in this particular case there is no financial incentive. Let's move even farther away. There are cults for clothing companies. Companies that make dr…

> Apple - You can argue Apple, the hardware company, is a cult. The fans are rabid in their support for the company. Often the discussions are not at all civil and in this particular case there is no financial incentive. According to Wikipedia, Apple has sold 1.2 billion+ iPhones. Are you going to tell me that all of those people are going to “rabidly” support Apple? No way. What you are seeing is a very vocal very s…

Not all people in the cryptocurrency space are followers of the cult either, though

Re: Bitcoin is a Cult

#117

Post by JumpCrisscross »

awt wrote: post #111
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What it actually is is more important than the misrepresentations presented by various misinformed parties Fair enough. Government bonds let countries deficit spend. They are also a stable store of value. These attributes make them useful. Bitcoin is neither of these. Like government bonds, it does not behave like money.

Government bonds are stable if you ignore tail risk. Governments tend to collapse eventually, at which point your bonds are not a great store of value. Bitcoin is however similar to a government bond in that it a) has value, b) is not directly useful for consumer transactions. Also, I dunno that behaving like money can be put in such stark binary terms.

> Government bonds are stable if you ignore tail risk

Nothing is eternal. That doesn’t make everything ephemeral equally risky. Bitcoin is a speculative asset. Speculative assets are volatile by design (you want them to go up).

More critically, government bonds’ role as a store of value is ancillary to their core purpose: to enable public deficit spending.

> Bitcoin is however similar to a government bond in that it a) has value, b) is not directly useful for consumer transactions

My cat has value and is useless for consumer transactions. That doesn’t make him a government bond.

Re: Bitcoin is a Cult

#118

Post by sparkie »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #62
shiado wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The shit you read on reddit is full of conspiracy theorist nonsense, and completely detached from Bitcoin development. Development is done and discussed in the open on mailing lists, github etc, and is subject to community review. There's a process outlined in BIP2 for any (non-trivial code) changes to the Bitcoin Core software. Of course, anyone can fork the software and make complaints publicly if there was malicious intent from the Core developers. There are a lot of people who have money invested in Bitcoin, and keep a close eye on the developments occurring.

Re: Bitcoin is a Cult

#119

Post by yolo1897 »

nope96 wrote: post #114
shiado wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to read an interesting story read this. https://old.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/6rxw7k/info...

This is a completely, outrageously false version of events, and it is very frustrating trying to debunk it for non-crytpo geeks who haven't followed things. There is a group of "altcoin" (ICO and non-Bitcoin coins) investors who have put together a terrific social media team and spread nonsense like this. They run a "The_Donald"-esq subreddit called /r/btc who's head moderator is Roger Ver, convicted felon (sold expl…

ho another troll from /r/bitcoin. Read carefully, everything is sourced. Everyone favorable to small blocks came to that opinion after all the communications channels were censored by Theymos and the like to delete alternate opinions. Was absolutely fascinating, and disturbing, to watch that unfold.

Re: Bitcoin is a Cult

#120

Post by Retric »

ForHackernews wrote: post #92
B-Con wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interesting_number_paradox

That actually has an interesting failure. The first interesting number that's interesting because it's not special works. The second might qualify, the 10008 does not.
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