Bitcoin is a disaster • Hacker News Board

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#211

Post by newdude116 » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 11:33 PM UTC

rualca wrote: post #149

hombre_fatal wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Bitcoin where ever possible, so your opening claim is wrong. I've been banned from Paypal. I've run into many verification issues over the last decade with banks because I have no proof of residency once my driver's license expired. Like physical cash, it doesn't need to be superior in all ways to be useful at all.

> I use Bitcoin where ever possible, so your opening claim is wrong. Just because a random guy barters bitcoins for goods/services, that by no means implies that bitcoin is anything close to money. There is a very specific definition of what money is, and bitcoin's volatility alone rules it completely out.

Well bitcoin is as much money as FIAT money, except if you consider money credit. Than indeed, bitcoin would not be money.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#212

Post by yunesj » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 11:33 PM UTC

glitchc wrote: post #135

sunshinerag wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't as simple as that. Not only have you got to change that line of code, you need to convince all users of bitcoin to run that version of the code including miners. Otherwise you have forked the coin and you might be the only user of it (your version is incompatible with the rest).

You don’t need most to agree. Just the basic majority (50%+). And of course that’s exactly what the major mining consortiums will do: Collude to increase the limit when it’s reached. After all, the rewards are in the mining, not the transaction fee.

> You don’t need most to agree. Just the basic majority (50%+). And of course that’s exactly what the major mining consortiums will do

You don't need anyone else to agree to start mining your own fork / altcoin. However, even if most of the miners change the protocol, it doesn't mean that the users will.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#213

Post by Traster » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 11:33 PM UTC

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…

> Bitcoin are "shock absorbers" of sorts, or early signals of inflation-yet-to-come.

Bitcoin doesn't go up because inflation is coming. The current value of bitcoin is an early indication of people betting on inflation. There doesn't need to be inflation, there only needs to be an expectation of inflation for investors to pile into bitcoin, thus massively driving up the price. And investors piling in will drive the price massively because there's a fixed supply of bitcoin so the price is entirely driven by demand and the current present value of all the bitcoins in existence is still ~500Bn, the same amount as a company on the stock excahnge. The price of all the gold in the world for comparison is ~10Tn. Or to put it another way, if inflation now doesn't happen, the price of bitcoin looks ridiculous and there'd be a massive crash as everyone floods back out. In fact, further than that, if inflation doesn't sky rocket then the value of BTC looks silly.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#214

Post by xapata » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 11:34 PM UTC

beaner wrote: post #173

phkahler wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The point is that Bitcoin has introduced an actual "digital cash" currency without institutional/governmental middlemen. The emergent cartel of miners becomes that.

If you think this, you don't understand Bitcoin.

Or maybe the other way around. Don't just assert. Explain.

From the article:

> The whole idea of proof-of-work mining is broken the instant hardware comes out which is specialized for mining and useless for general computation because at that point the need to have compute power for other purposes is absolutely irrelevant in having any effect on mining, and there ceases to be any force that causes mining to be distributed around the world. It becomes a "race to the bottom" to find where people can get the cheapest electricity, and then mining anywhere else - anywhere the government tries to make sure ordinary people actually get the benefit from electricity bought for tax money, for example - becomes first pointless, then a net loss.

It's the same story as some countries not having good quality coffee, avocados, quinoa, etc. because the export-quality goods are priced out of widespread domestic consumption.

With electricity production and distribution being a natural monopoly (and therefore typically regulated by the government), blockchain can't escape the realities of foreign exchange rates and government control.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#215

Post by hombre_fatal » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 11:34 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #183

hombre_fatal wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Bitcoin where ever possible, so your opening claim is wrong. I've been banned from Paypal. I've run into many verification issues over the last decade with banks because I have no proof of residency once my driver's license expired. Like physical cash, it doesn't need to be superior in all ways to be useful at all.

I have no proof of residency once my driver's license expired. Every state I've lived in (13 so far) has an ID card that looks and acts exactly like a driver's license, with the only legal difference being that it is not valid for driving. Unless you're not in America, in which case someone else can chime in.

If you don't live in the US, then it becomes difficult to prove state residency as they want things like pay stubs, cellphone bills, and rent payments. Or you need to find someone who can prove residency and then claim (lie) that you reside (domicile) with them.

I don't have any of that. But maybe you can appreciate that I don't want to have to jump through those hoops just to be able to send someone $100 digitally.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#216

Post by bostonsre » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 11:34 PM UTC

hnracer wrote: post #155

addicted wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one treats Bitcoin as a currency. It’s treated as an investment vehicle. And the reason behind that is obvious. Something whose value may double in a month or whose value may halve within weeks is a terrible currency. If I expect it’s value to increase then I would be a fool to spend it. If I expect it’s value to drop I would be a fool to accept it. Cryptocurrencies are anything but currencies.

You can just hedge your exposure on a futures exchange and still use BTC to transact but be unexposed to any price movements. Although doing that is very complicated and defeats the purpose of an easy to use alternative to centralized cash.

That sounds like it could be a PITA for everyday people tho.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#217

Post by api » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 11:34 PM UTC

Bitcoin is a very interesting piece of technology that has become a bubble due to a combination of historically low interest rates (and QE, and other forms of actual money printing) combined with a scarcity of good investments.

Without the forces transforming it into a bubble, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies would be interesting technologies used by enthusiasts, as an international wire transfer method, and for some black and grey market commerce. They wouldn't be anywhere near as insane as they are.

These same forces are causing the stock market and real estate to go apeshit in the middle of a pandemic-driven massive recession, which is in some ways even more insane than Bitcoin.

We are in a chronically demand-constrained economy. Until we actually recapitalize the consumer, nothing will change. We'll continue to print money forever in an attempt to revitalize the economy, and all it will do is inflate more bubbles and probably even nuttier ones.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#218

Post by kart23 » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 11:34 PM UTC

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…

Yes, many have speculated that as oil and gold prices in the past acted as hedges against inflation, btc may very well be that next place that investors go in times of heavy inflation. If liquidity is good, I think that this works. But the problem is that liquidity in bitcoin is so different from other classes of investments, and we don't fully know what is possible with this kind of market yet.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#219

Post by _wp3r » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 11:34 PM UTC

Consumers want safety(fraud/transaction protection) not anonymity.

Currently the largest and most motivated group of users that want transaction anonymity are those that want to deliberately circumvent tracking for gain.

Credit cards solved the digital currency problem decades ago.

The anonymity feature argument was always going to fall on deaf ears with consumers.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#220

Post by ashtonkem » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 11:34 PM UTC

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…

> Don't keep it on exchange.

This advice has always made me chuckle. It so profoundly misunderstands how non-techies actually think and operate, that I genuinely wonder how it arose. Exchanges exist and are incredibly popular because they're convenient. If you want to convince people to stop doing something that you think is bad, you need to provide a more convenient alternative, otherwise your advice will be ignored.