Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling • Hacker News Board

Re: Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

#191

Post by cc439 » Sun, Aug 26, 2018, 7:19 PM UTC

bobthepanda wrote: post #112

deevolution wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe its a generational thing, but i have no clue how i would go about buying/trading gold and i dont think anyone in my friend group does either. Bitcoin is far more accessible.

You can literally go to a gold dealer shop; it's like forex for gold. Even in my moderately sized American city there are twenty that show up in Google Maps within a twenty minute drive. And you buy gold and it's physically in your possession; verifying it is easy, and the best part is you can verify it at some other gold dealer if you're super paranoid. With BTC, you have to find a trusted exchange and a trusted wal…

Do you have any first hand experience with buying gold from local dealers? I've never really looked into it but the vast majority of gold dealers in my city are also pawn shops geared toward purchasing gold rather than selling it. While I'm unsure as to their exact pricing model for selling gold, the way in which pawn shops are known to buy precious metals leads me to believe I'd be paying significantly more than whatever the current spot price is if I was to buy through them.

Re: Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

#192

Post by comboy » Sun, Aug 26, 2018, 7:20 PM UTC

GW150914 wrote: post #159

comboy wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does it know you have one? You can use brain wallet[1], you can use trezor with multiple passphrases. You can give up some of your bitcoins and if you manage your wallets properly then no one can prove you have some more. 1. Don't use brain wallets, unless you really understand security

Because at some point you have to pay taxes, or break the law. They nailed Al Capone, and you’re not Al Capone. I suppose you could buy it in secret and never liquidate it, spend it, or declare it... and therefore never benefit from it. I guess that’s a “win” in some books? Otherwise the answer to your question is pretty obvious, and ends with you in prison.

I don't see how taxes are in any way relevant to this discussion. Definitely do pay your taxes. I was answering to a specific question, the bad guy here can just as well be somebody who is trying to rob you.

But if it helps you, think about some other government, not necessarily the US one. Do you think they all do the right thing? Should you or should you not be able to help your starving family in Venezuela?

They really can't all be doing "the right thing" because they have wars between each other. And those are legal in their books. But you probably want to play along however imperfect rules your government sets, that is until you want to escape the country and you don't want it to be your government anymore. Because e.g. you don't feel like killing every Jew you know and that just became the law.

Re: Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

#193

Post by lalaland1125 » Sun, Aug 26, 2018, 7:20 PM UTC

tzs wrote: post #147

TACIXAT wrote: post #21

A currency with no mechanism for monetary policy is not going to be adopted. Bitcoin is purely deflationary for more reasons than just people losing their keys. For example, a fixed reward split between a growing group of miners will also cause a rising price floor. The miners will not sell for less than their electricity costs, which makes the smaller piece of the block reward they receive have a higher price. So yo…

> For example, a fixed reward split between a growing group of miners will also cause a rising price floor. The miners will not sell for less than their electricity costs, which makes the smaller piece of the block reward they receive have a higher price. There is one group of miners for whom electricity costs and Bitcoin price don't really matter much: home miners in cold regions whose homes used electrical resistan…

This logic is flawed because it doesn't consider the fact that we have more efficient heaters than electric space heaters. In particular, the two main alternatives are gas (more efficient because you skip inefficient fuel -> electricity steps) and heat pumps (more efficient because you draw in heat from outside). Compared to these alternatives, Bitcoin miners make very, very inefficient heaters.

Re: Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

#194

Post by jchw » Sun, Aug 26, 2018, 7:22 PM UTC

acdha wrote: post #74

jchw wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Was the goal of Bitcoin ever to be the successor to paper money? We're here today and Bitcoin is a functional payment network. Not only that, it's a fairly large one, and it has become a household name. I don't really use Bitcoin but I think it's hyperbole to consider it a unilateral failure just because it didn't supercede traditional currency.

It’s a household name because of speculation, however, and statistically almost nobody uses it for the kind of decentralized transactions for which it was originally pitched. The number of vendors accepting it has gone down over time (e.g. Steam, Microsoft) due to the endemic problems and many of the people who claim to use it (even here) are actually using the credit card network with government currencies for the a…

I can use Bitcoin today, right now, right here. I actually do occasionally, it's how I pay for VPN service. So is it a failure? No. It's a successful payment network. It didn't cause a libertarian Utopia or whatever, but that's a pretty lofty goal for a conceptual currency based on cryptographic hashing. I have nothing else to say here.

Re: Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

#195

Post by cygaril » Sun, Aug 26, 2018, 7:27 PM UTC

lossolo wrote: post #187

fwip wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even with subsidies, there's an effective price floor. Even with renewable energy there's an opportunity cost - you can sell it back to the grid. Plus the fixed costs of buying the solar panels and mining equipment in the first place.

> Even with renewable energy there's an opportunity cost - you can sell it back to the grid. Plus the fixed costs of buying the solar panels and mining equipment in the first place. In many cases this doesn't matter, as it 's being paid by someone else. Millions of teenagers mining crypto on their GPUs, their parents pay for electricity, what about enthusiasts? They will mine even if price is higher than the value of…

Every two weeks, roughly.

Re: Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

#196

Post by tmornini_ey » Sun, Aug 26, 2018, 7:30 PM UTC

TACIXAT wrote: post #21

A currency with no mechanism for monetary policy is not going to be adopted. Bitcoin is purely deflationary for more reasons than just people losing their keys. For example, a fixed reward split between a growing group of miners will also cause a rising price floor. The miners will not sell for less than their electricity costs, which makes the smaller piece of the block reward they receive have a higher price. So yo…

> it is always deflationary

Except for the fact that it is currently, and always has been, inflationary.

You need to learn more about economics.

Inflation/Deflation is a separate phenomenon than rising/falling value — though they are sometimes related.

Re: Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

#197

Post by mortdeus » Sun, Aug 26, 2018, 7:32 PM UTC

ashelmire wrote: post #25

keymone wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By money you mean what exactly? Anything in a bank account is not money but promise of money that can be taken away without your knowledge. Any specific currency is subject to whim of corresponding central bank. Sure, some are safer than others but still. Even the right to participate is not a given as you can be banned from opening a bank account. Bitcoin is orders of magnitude better money than anything else in eve…

>Bitcoin is orders of magnitude better money than anything else in every aspect except convenience, but it’s getting there. Firstly, if you think money exists for any reason other than convenience, you fundamentally misunderstand why money exists. Its whole purpose is convenience, to make trade easier. Secondly, the points above are more than just convenience. You have no recourse in cases of fraud or crime when it c…

Fiat currency is not convenient when it comes to international trade. And it is not convenient as a method of storing large masses of wealth.

The fact is, if you were once super rich in Venezuela and you had all your wealth in stacks of Venezuelan money, now you are no longer rich.

Which is why most rich people in other countries like to exchange their tangible money for other nation's currency. Because in the event that their country's economy goes belly up then at least not all of their money has become worthless.

The problem is that not everybody might be willing to exchange your country's currency for theirs. Which is why the US dollar is the international standard for currency exchange.

The big problem the designer of bitcoin saw is the fact that when one country has the ability to make money that everybody wants, we end up in a situation where that country has an unfair advantage to strong arm other nations into a mode of compliance. Like all the US has to do is say that nobody from the US is allowed to exchange their money for Venezuela's money, nor are they allowed to exchange their money for somebody else's money when said person has a history of exchanging currency with Venezuela.

The fact that a few countries can get away with such behavior, means in the end that countries are placed into an economic ladder and nobody is allowed to take a step up if that comes at the expense of somebody higher up on the rung having to take a step down.

In other words, the US has become a monopoly on all other countries when our dollar is in the middle of international trade.

Bitcoin in theory is supposed to replace the dollar role in this sense where no one nation gains the ability to strong arm other nations into behaving in a way that might be contrary to their best interest.

Re: Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

#198

Post by salawat » Sun, Aug 26, 2018, 7:37 PM UTC

tedunangst wrote: post #148

salawat wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His point is the fundamental principles of fractional reserve are flawed, and the system will alwayssuffer from the looming threat of a bank run. It's rather disingenuous to say that people having money stolen from them isn't a problem when you have a system that cyclically chucks out an Enron or Sub-Prime mortgage crisis every ten years or so that typically ends up getting resolved on the taxpayer's dime. The defini…

I have no idea how switching to bitcoin for currency would prevent Enron.

I'm not saying it would. I was using Enron as an example of a case where people ended up losing a ton of value in terms of life savings disappearing.

Bitcoin if anything exacerbates the "poof' likelihood of value.

Re: Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

#199

Post by WJW » Sun, Aug 26, 2018, 7:39 PM UTC

conanbatt wrote: post #151

TACIXAT wrote: post #21

A currency with no mechanism for monetary policy is not going to be adopted. Bitcoin is purely deflationary for more reasons than just people losing their keys. For example, a fixed reward split between a growing group of miners will also cause a rising price floor. The miners will not sell for less than their electricity costs, which makes the smaller piece of the block reward they receive have a higher price. So yo…

I disagree with several of your statements. First, bitcoin has a monetary policy, and the key is that it cant be changed, which is very appealing: more appealing that storing gold vs fiat, since gold has a less predictable monetary policy. Gold had been chosen as currency for most of history, across cultures and languages. In countries where the currency breaks down, things like chocolate, potatoes or corn get into c…

> and the key is that it cant be changed, which is very appealing

This is only very appealing if:

- It is never necessary to change monetary policy.

- The same monetary policy is appropriate for all nations.

- The monetary policy that was chosen by the bitcoin dev team is exactly the right one.

Re: Bitcoin's Use in Commerce Keeps Falling

#200

Post by DINKDINK » Sun, Aug 26, 2018, 7:39 PM UTC

jonny_eh wrote: post #2

When can we call Bitcoin a failed experiment? And don't tell me it was "always about storing value", that's not in the original paper.

>that's not in the original paper.

Bitcoin the protocol != bitcoin the paper.

The main point of the paper was show that you can solve the byzantine generals problem in a completely untrusted. This contribution built on prior distributed-system designs such as Paxos.

>don't tell me it was "always about storing value"

Bitcoin was always about a fixed-scarcity asset/currency given that the controlled supply algorithm was in the very first version.

Bitcoin doesn't need people's interpretations of bitcoin to be positive to come to trustless consensus.

>When can we call Bitcoin a failed experiment?

If you think that Bitcoin's value is $0 long term, why not go short and make reams of money? After 10 years the market has shown that owning 100 btc has preserved more purchasing power than owning 100 USD, What's your call for the next 10 years?