Bitcoin still makes no sense • Hacker News Board

Re: Bitcoin still makes no sense

#31

Post by almostdigital » Sun, Dec 06, 2020, 1:35 AM UTC

silexia wrote: post #22

There have been lots of other currencies privately traded previously, but since the state has the guns the state can outlaw it. If it truly started competing with major currencies you would see it outlawed. It also is not secure as China is controlling a majority of the mining now and the majority can control the currency. Further, Google has a computer that can hack the encryption and you will see a lot more organiz…

> Google has a computer that can hack the encryption

Citation needed

Re: Bitcoin still makes no sense

#32

Post by domatic1 » Sun, Dec 06, 2020, 1:36 AM UTC

I'm still surprised that bitcoin is hated here, such a great technology. It's a decentralised currency, and it's working really well. A lot of big institutions are taking it seriously now. Does paper cash printed by government make more sense?

Re: Bitcoin still makes no sense

#33

Post by postingpals » Sun, Dec 06, 2020, 1:37 AM UTC

codyb wrote: post #21

immigration311 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making (certain) illegal activities easier is one of the primary positive effects.

I'll assume you're referring to obtaining drugs which many consider to be something that at the very least should not be punished by prison time (myself included), as opposed to say... the distribution of child pornography, ordering hit men, arms trafficking, or the selling of hacked credit card numbers, passwords, and zero days. If that was your idea, wouldn't we be better served by lobbying our politicians to move…

Personally I assumed they meant exchanging money in secret if you are a whistleblower and the government is after you.

Re: Bitcoin still makes no sense

#34

Post by mandragon » Sun, Dec 06, 2020, 1:37 AM UTC

What's the risk for bitcoin pertinent to entrenched pre-quantum encryption? Are the wallet/private key pairs based on such cryptography?

What's the technical feasibility of migrating BTC's pow scheme to quantum-resistant hashing?

What is the technical feasibility of migrating wallet/private keys to quantum-resistant crypto?

Would any such migration of wallet/private keys be dependent on public/non-public interactions with the blockchain by wallet holders, and would those interactions introduce deanonymization or other risks?

Re: Bitcoin still makes no sense

#35

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Dec 06, 2020, 1:37 AM UTC

almostdigital wrote: post #31

silexia wrote: post #22

There have been lots of other currencies privately traded previously, but since the state has the guns the state can outlaw it. If it truly started competing with major currencies you would see it outlawed. It also is not secure as China is controlling a majority of the mining now and the majority can control the currency. Further, Google has a computer that can hack the encryption and you will see a lot more organiz…

> Google has a computer that can hack the encryption Citation needed

[deleted]

Re: Bitcoin still makes no sense

#36

Post by sesuximo » Sun, Dec 06, 2020, 1:37 AM UTC

beaner wrote: post #12

tomerico wrote: post #4

The problem with Bitcoin and is that it creates real negative effects, with little positive effects to show for it. The most prominent negative effect is the huge energy waste, which doesn't help when we are trying to cut on our carbon footprint The second one is that it makes illegal activities easier, and at a larger scale. It's quite common right now for companies to be coerced pay millions of dollars to anonymous…

Money is a self-organizing system of resource management. Bitcoin is better money, because it allows for more pure self-organization, as a result of its money supply being predetermined by hard-coded algorithm, rather than by fiat decree. This single benefit far outweighs the mentioned negatives. It has the potential to completely eliminate the boom/bust cycle, eliminate currency manipulation that facilitates interna…

I don’t think any of these things come close to paying for the energy cost Bitcoin used circa 2018 (I haven’t looked recently — has it decreased?). And that cost would skyrocket if everyone used it day to day

Re: Bitcoin still makes no sense

#37

Post by fullstop » Sun, Dec 06, 2020, 1:38 AM UTC

almostdigital wrote: post #31

silexia wrote: post #22

There have been lots of other currencies privately traded previously, but since the state has the guns the state can outlaw it. If it truly started competing with major currencies you would see it outlawed. It also is not secure as China is controlling a majority of the mining now and the majority can control the currency. Further, Google has a computer that can hack the encryption and you will see a lot more organiz…

> Google has a computer that can hack the encryption Citation needed

I believe that they are referring to quantum computing

Re: Bitcoin still makes no sense

#38

Post by alexpetralia » Sun, Dec 06, 2020, 1:38 AM UTC

silexia wrote: post #22

There have been lots of other currencies privately traded previously, but since the state has the guns the state can outlaw it. If it truly started competing with major currencies you would see it outlawed. It also is not secure as China is controlling a majority of the mining now and the majority can control the currency. Further, Google has a computer that can hack the encryption and you will see a lot more organiz…

I've always thought a monopoly on violence trumps a monopoly on logic. I don't see how blockchain overcomes this.

Re: Bitcoin still makes no sense

#39

Post by bawolff » Sun, Dec 06, 2020, 1:39 AM UTC

scoopertrooper wrote: post #16

ridaj wrote: post #3

It makes sense to me about as much as the trade in ancient coins, stamps, and other collectibles. These are reasonable asset classes if you like gambling, with a somewhat fixed supply, not a lot of industrial applications, and wild price fluctuations based entirely on subjective appreciation. Bitcoin is more liquid but otherwise the price dynamic looks about the same...

I guess the key difference is that less startups have bilked investors by peddling fantastical dreams of post-fiat ancient coin based economies.

Maybe less tech startups, but im pretty sure a bunch of people popped up to bilk other people out of their money during the beenie baby craze.

Re: Bitcoin still makes no sense

#40

Post by analog31 » Sun, Dec 06, 2020, 1:39 AM UTC

ffwd wrote: post #15

some hobbyist observations, please correct me if I'm wrong: >I’m still trying to piece together what exactly how much control governments really lose under Bitcoin, whether I can see that as a positive or a negative, and whether I agree with Dalio that governments would (or could) take action to prevent it. I don't think they could control it at all, as I will get into in the next post >The enforcement of debt and th…

>>> Because of this, governments could no longer do any automated taxation, they could no longer have any verification of who owns what, and so they would have to manually tax everyone based on manual observation of physical assets, as they probably couldn't look into most peoples actual financial records either, unless it was voluntary. This is untenable of course

They could tax you by a percentage of each asset. At the end of the year, you might owe 31 bitcoins, 0.0125 acre of land, and a chicken.

Ironically, this is why money was invented in the first place -- an asset that represents value rather than having inherent value (such as, the inherent value of a chicken is one chicken).