Bitcoin is a disaster • Hacker News Board

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#61

Post by heidar » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 10:58 PM UTC

rmason wrote: post #14

I was real excited the first time that Bitcoin was explained to me. I saw it as the first real alternative to paper money. But what I soon learned is that most of the people associated with Bitcoin saw it as digital gold and were only interested in seeing the value rise and cashing out. I've seen a few positive developments every once in a while that fail to get much adoption. So I keep waiting and waiting. It increa…

Seems like adoption as a payment method halted when Bitcoin had scaling issues.

Now the community seems pretty split in two. There's people who are for Bitcoin and see it as a store of value and people who are for Bitcoin Cash who see it as a store of value and a method of payment.

The main contention seems to be around block sizes and wether to increase the block size to make it more scalable, hence the BCH fork.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#62

Post by doggosphere » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 10:59 PM UTC

loeg wrote: post #53

keithwhor wrote: post #24

Related: the current rise of Bitcoin prices has been peculiar to me, and seems to be a bit of a canary in an inflationary coal mine. We've injected trillions of dollars of fiat into the economy this year. It feels like the sky-high valuations of technology companies and Bitcoin are "shock absorbers" of sorts, or early signals of inflation-yet-to-come. If we assume the market is efficiently pricing these assets (like…

BTC prices have approximately zero relation to inflation in the real economy (for whatever definition of that you want to use). Rising BTC prices are driven by pyramid scams, fraud, and speculation. There is no useful signal here related to anything else.

BTC prices have been driven by institutional demand and federal monetary policy.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#63

Post by analog31 » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 10:59 PM UTC

jokethrowaway wrote: post #13

Completely agreeable, albeit it misses a point: Governments can't print more of it. That's it really, everything else is noise. I can sympathize with btc (I wish we still had a gold standard, or a standard based on the price of common goods) but I don't see much the other benefits. On top of this, governments could ban btc.

But governments can subsidize the electricity to create new Bitcoins. Isn't that the same as printing money?

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#64

Post by rhacker » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 10:59 PM UTC

The entire point of some of the alt-coins was to address all these complaints. So instead of piling onto Bitcoin which is years of stuff we already know about, focus on those alt-coins that support the ideas you want in a cryptocurrency.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#65

Post by wyldfire » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 10:59 PM UTC

ancharm wrote: post #2

Does bitcoin moving to a proof-of-stake algorithm change your opinion?

It is a good idea but doesn't address several other points of critique in this post.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#66

Post by sunshinerag » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 10:59 PM UTC

raziel2701 wrote: post #29

sunshinerag wrote: post #8

I have no idea what he is talking about. I use bitcoin to buy things both onchain and via lightning and the experience is so smooth and much much better than the circa 2017 period when fees were high. Don't keep it on exchange. The real thing that is stopping adoption is countries trying to classify it as a commodity and insist to pay capital gains on every microtransaction. Some countries are backwards (US, UK) than…

What kind of things do you buy with it and where? I remember seeing some adoption back when steam started accepting it, but sometime later they stopped because it was too volatile. I thought paying fees for the transaction made bitcoin very unappealing as well. It's not anonymous either, so I just couldn't find a reason to use it as it didn't solve anything that I couldn't do with my credit card. And my credit card o…

I buy computer hardware (SSDs, network switches etc.), recently bought t-shirts and etsy like stuff on gethaven.app

Bitcoin has always been pseudoanonymous and its perma history is something that I am aware off and not that bothered off. Though looks like the bitcoin devs are working towards something to improve privacy called taproot and schnorr.

The thing that it solves for me compared to traditional fiat currencies is that it retains its value very well over a period of time. some of the bitcoin stuff I bought long back and spent it on hardware now means I got the hardware for nearly more than 500% cheaper if I had chosen to hold it in dollar or other fiat currencies.

Fiat currencies are a liability (depreciating value) if you are not constantly trying to invest them just to keep their value from crashing due to accelerating money printing/inflation.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#67

Post by oblio » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 10:59 PM UTC

baby wrote: post #31

That’s nonsense. Bitcoin is as good a store of value as gold due to one unique feature: scarcity. Actually, it’s even less power consuming than the gold industry and is much more transparent. I wouldn’t really advise bitcoin for anything else, like day to day transactions, although I and many of my friends have used bitcoin to transact on dark markets and it works. The only argument I’ve heard about gold being better…

> Gold is good for nothing useful imo, but is used in jewlery and other because it has value (not the other way around, as in gold has value because people make jewelry with it).

You do know that gold has super low reactivity and it's a very good conductor, right? :-)

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#68

Post by tanseydavid » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 11:00 PM UTC

loeg wrote: post #53

keithwhor wrote: post #24

Related: the current rise of Bitcoin prices has been peculiar to me, and seems to be a bit of a canary in an inflationary coal mine. We've injected trillions of dollars of fiat into the economy this year. It feels like the sky-high valuations of technology companies and Bitcoin are "shock absorbers" of sorts, or early signals of inflation-yet-to-come. If we assume the market is efficiently pricing these assets (like…

BTC prices have approximately zero relation to inflation in the real economy (for whatever definition of that you want to use). Rising BTC prices are driven by pyramid scams, fraud, and speculation. There is no useful signal here related to anything else.

Do you believe that speculative activity is not related in any way to inflation or expectations of inflation?

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#69

Post by JacksonGariety » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 11:00 PM UTC

hombre_fatal wrote: post #39

Barrin92 wrote: post #3

>The scarcity of block chain space has led people to re-invent every last feature of the banks they thought they were going to be escaping. This is a pretty funny point because every time I go on twitter and see people talk about crypto, what they're essentially having is a discussion about public policy, and often they seem to try to reinvent institutions that already exist without even knowing it. From market-maker…

I don't see the irony. The point is that Bitcoin has introduced an actual "digital cash" currency without institutional/governmental middlemen. That institutions can be built on top of that, and that some people want such institutions, doesn't change the novel utility of finally having a currency that functions like digital cash. It's like saying it's ironic that people use physical USD for anonymous p2p transactions…

Don't all currencies work that way?

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#70

Post by wyldfire » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 11:00 PM UTC

sunshinerag wrote: post #12

ancharm wrote: post #2

Does bitcoin moving to a proof-of-stake algorithm change your opinion?

But bitcoin is not moving to a proof-of-stake algorithm, .. there are a lot of alt coins trying that and flailing around with that notion.

Several coins started off with proof of stake and aren't flailing arguably.