Bitcoin is a disaster • Hacker News Board

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#431

Post by sn_master » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 12:40 AM UTC

templarchamp wrote: post #289

Bitcoins are digital-hawalas and therefore are keepsakes. You can find yourself or pay to get someone's keepsakes. There is no counter-party, just like gold and oil. Once I own it, there is no way to consume it other than to barter it. It could be made illegal anytime by authorities.

Fentanyl, Meth, Shrooms, Credit Reports, child abuse videos, guns and gun parts, credit reports, scamming the elderly out of their lifesavings with BTC ATMs and strong arming hospitals into paying tens of millions with ransomware during the pandemic are "keepsakes"?

Please fix your time machine and join us in 2021, Its awesome in here!

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#432

Post by feanaro » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 12:40 AM UTC

notsureaboutpg wrote: post #391

cambalache wrote: post #304

I agree with most of the points raised by the author but as a Venezuelan Bitcoin is a godsend. If you live abroad and want to send remittances to your friends and family it can be pretty easy in a normal country , with wire transfers,western union and so on. If your family lives in Venezuela your options are extremely more limited. These are some of the options Venezuelans have had to use: 1. Ask the money to be sent…

The only reason BTC works in this scenario is that the authorities are not chasing it down. If they decide to, it will be just as unviable as the other options and authorities have many methods at their disposal to make bitcoin transfers difficult. BTC is cool, but no amount of tech can solve what is essentially a policy issue: overseas remittances.

Why is it obvious that no amount of tech can solve it? Tech can also influence policy. If something is nearly impossible to stop, it likely won't be stopped. The policy will be changed instead.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#433

Post by Acrobatic_Road » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 12:40 AM UTC

foepys wrote: post #58

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…

The Lightning Network doesn't solve the congestion problem for global adoption. To open a lightning channel you need an on-chain transaction. The same is true to close one. Assuming 2,500 transactions per block, you will need ~970 days to just open a lightning channel for each US citizen (assuming 350 million citizens and no other Bitcoin transactions). Due to his limitation the Lightning Network is unsuited for any…

https://blockonomi.com/channel-factories-bitcoin-lightning-n...

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#434

Post by dwaltrip » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 12:41 AM UTC

leoplct wrote: post #347

BTC is incredibly overvalued. if you value Bitcoin as much as the cost of the labor it takes to create one, then it should be worth a lot less.

The labor theory of value doesn't seem to match how people actually assign valuations or make transactions.

The cost of labor (and other inputs) obviously affects prices, but there are many other factors. The main one being if anyone is interested in actually paying the amount in question.

It doesn't matter how much labor it took to make something if no one wants it. On the other hand, if others can't produce a comparable product and there is significant demand, then the price may easily be much higher than the cost of the inputs.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#435

Post by pvg » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 12:41 AM UTC

sunshinerag wrote: post #176

pvg wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The intent was 'actual digital cash', the result was 'instrument for speculation, money laundering and other fraud' which is entirely dependent on actual real money (and its institutions). Whether one finds that ironic or not is a matter of taste but it's clearly not exactly what the goal of "digital cash" was supposed to be.

Dollar is still the king of money laundering. Regulatory support, shoddy bank regulations makes it a smooth experience of money launderers and mafia with USD.

Yes because the dollar is still the king of, well, money. All the Bitcoin fraud and money laundering ends up being dollar fraud and dollar money laundering, otherwise nobody would care.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#436

Post by ineedasername » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 12:41 AM UTC

rkagerer wrote: post #324

I bought my smartphone from Hong Kong, in part because I wanted a specific variant that would be more likely to work with open-source ROM's. The seller initially requested payment via Transferwise, who sought crazy amounts of personal information and bullied me into a privacy-hostile customer agreement. Days went by and they still hadn't activated my account. Growing frustrated, I convinced the seller to accept Bitco…

It wasn't so much Bitcoin that saved the day, but a choice of payment processor by the seller that caused the problem to begin with. Heck, PayPal works in HongKong. Ultimately bitcoin made your transaction much smoother, but it was a sufficient, not a necessary condition in making it smoother.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#437

Post by NicoJuicy » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 12:41 AM UTC

bconnorwhite wrote: post #416

Most of the criticisms in this thread seem to be missing that Bitcoin is only layer 1. Bitcoin isn't Visa or cash - its gold. Rather than shipping gold across the Atlantic, large institutions will settle in a few minutes in Bitcoin. L2/L3/L4 solutions (built into Apple Pay, etc.) will allow for instant payments for coffee, allow for privacy similar to physical cash, etc. Before this is possible, the price has to stab…

Bitcoin ain't sold. Gold had it's value being tradeable offline.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#438

Post by 1-6 » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 12:42 AM UTC

cambalache wrote: post #304

I agree with most of the points raised by the author but as a Venezuelan Bitcoin is a godsend. If you live abroad and want to send remittances to your friends and family it can be pretty easy in a normal country , with wire transfers,western union and so on. If your family lives in Venezuela your options are extremely more limited. These are some of the options Venezuelans have had to use: 1. Ask the money to be sent…

Why aren’t there any mention of highly popular alt-coins like Litecoin? It’s less volatile for real use as a fiat alternative and transaction speeds are a lot faster because of the low service fee to speed things up. I kinda regretted keeping funds in Litecoin but it was one of the first to fix Bitcoin’s shortcomings.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#439

Post by cambalache » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 12:42 AM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #352

cambalache wrote: post #304

I agree with most of the points raised by the author but as a Venezuelan Bitcoin is a godsend. If you live abroad and want to send remittances to your friends and family it can be pretty easy in a normal country , with wire transfers,western union and so on. If your family lives in Venezuela your options are extremely more limited. These are some of the options Venezuelans have had to use: 1. Ask the money to be sent…

Is this from personal experience? And is there any data available to show that it's doing significant volume in Venezuela versus other options?

It is ironic because the economy in Venezuela is fucked, but almost every crypto-service or novel online pay modality is a huge hit in Venezuela.There are many FOREIGN apps where the customer base is +70% Venezuelan.

Some links:

https://cointelegraph.com/news/venezuela-sets-new-bitcoin-vo...

https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-adoption-venezuela-research

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#440

Post by rualca » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 12:42 AM UTC

newdude116 wrote: post #211

rualca wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Than indeed, bitcoin would not be money.

Bitcoin is obviously not money, and among the many reasons the fact that it does not serve as a store of value nor a means to defer payments, which is a single requirement that comprised the very definition of money, is just one of them.