Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bitcoin still makes no sense

thinkoutloudnews.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 161 posts

Re: Bitcoin still makes no sense

#41

Post by oconnor663 »

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 think this is a roundabout way of saying Google has a quantum computer.

Bitcoin does not involve encryption, and it's a common mistake by journalists to toss that buzzword in there.

Re: Bitcoin still makes no sense

#42

Post by mandragon »

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…

A QC to implement shor's algo at a practical level would need millions of non-ec'ed qubits. At least publicly, we are likely quite far from any such advance.

Re: Bitcoin still makes no sense

#43

Post by 1996 »

To the people who really want to learn: you won't get quality advice here.

BTC has been hated on HN since it's creation. Even over 10 years later, the crypto luddites keep coming at it.

Learn by yourself instead of listening to the doomsayers: some people thought independently, like this person in 2011 who was ridiculed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2596475

Check the discussion from 2017: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15976946

Then the new one from 2020, 3 months before the current rally: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24259700

Then make your own judgement, as most of the people here won't learn. They refuse to - they are too emotionally invested in their past lapse of judgement, so they need to rationalize it and double down, in the hope that maybe it will crash and everybody will know they were right all along!

It's been going on for over 10 years, so follow their advice at your own risk.

Re: Bitcoin still makes no sense

#44

Post by Cyph0n »

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 am guessing the poster is referring to quantum computers, which are not yet even close to breaking cryptographic hashing algorithms as far as I understand.

Re: Bitcoin still makes no sense

#45

Post by SrslyJosh »

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…

> 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.

Because bitcoin requires substantial inputs (hardware, energy), if it actually has legs, it will end up being controlled by whoever controls the most capital.

That's not self-organization, that's just replicating the same broken economic system we have right now, but (ironically) with much lower efficiency.

> It has the potential to completely eliminate the boom/bust cycle

Citation needed. =)

> eliminate currency manipulation

"A single anonymous market manipulator caused bitcoin to top $20,000 two years ago, study shows"

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/04/study-single-anonymous-marke...

> free hyperinflated jurisdictions from that aspect of their poverty.

I'm sure that'll work great for folks who can afford to buy (or would be payed in increments of) approximately 0.0005 BTC at a time. What are transaction fees these days, anyway? =)

Re: Bitcoin still makes no sense

#47

Post by tamrix »

Everyone wants to be rich through bitcoin as an investment. No one will actual use it as an everyday currency. If it is the winner of the cyrpto digital currency war. It will be the end of civilisation.

Re: Bitcoin still makes no sense

#48

Post by prohobo »

This seems more like it's questioning cryptocurrency itself, and putting it at odds with fiat currencies and states.

As for states, they're rolling out their own cryptos. The Chinese have CryptoYuan, the EU central bank is releasing a currency likely by late 2021, and the Federal Reserve is also planning to create a new currency. That's how they beat Bitcoin.

Fiat currency is likely going to be slowly phased out as cryptos take hold, like an old iPhone.

States will absolutely gain power if they adopt cryptos, because they can implement currencies that can always be tracked and disseminated much faster and easier than fiat.

Re: Bitcoin still makes no sense

#49

Post by ccortes »

dmitriid wrote: post #19

Bitcoin is just a part of a larger problem disucssed in these two articles fro m3 years ago. They are still as true as three years ago: "Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain": https://hackernoon.com/ten-years-in-nobody-has-come-up-with-... Follow up, "Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future": https://medium.com/@kaistinchcombe/decentralized-and-trustle...

It is pretty useful for cross-border payments

Re: Bitcoin still makes no sense

#50

Post by bitxbitxbitcoin »

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…

It's perfectly usable for actual legal transactions on a regular basis.

Which government exactly would do the outlawing? We're actually seeing the opposite.[1]

[1]https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/japan-cryptocurrency-re...

Post reply on HN