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Bitcoin is a disaster

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Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#721

Post by dehrmann »

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…

Not to downplay the shitty situation that Venezuela is in right now, it says something when that's the only situation a quasi-currency is good in. It's almost like for all of Bitcoin's problems, Venezuela has more.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#722

Post by cesarb »

Kinrany wrote: post #668
cesarb wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Brazil, we have that since last month. The new money transfer system (Pix) allows anyone to send money to a key, which can be a person's CPF (the tax ID number nearly everyone has), a phone number, an email, or a randomly-generated number. These all map to a bank account (you can also use Pix to send directly to a bank account number); the directory with these mappings is kept by the Brazilian Central Bank, a…

From this description it sounds like just name resolution that still uses the regular banking system.

The name resolution is just part of it (though the most visible part); there's also a new message exchange protocol, over the national inter-bank network, which does the instant transfers (before this new protocol, inter-bank transfers were only instant during banking hours, not on nights/weekends/holidays).

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#723

Post by cyphertruck »

kmeisthax wrote: post #718

We know . Hell, Bitcoin Core developers have known for years, that's why they never endorsed a base block increase. That's why they've put all their energy into adding upper layers with transactions secured by flimsy game theory rather than flimsy hashcash. That's why they pushed for SegWit, purely because it would make the complicated transactions necessary to run those upper layers not more expensive than direct tr…

The SegWit project quadrupled the max block size in 2016. Since then there’s never been significant backlogs.

Even with record high prices, one hour transactions are less than a dollar. Maybe even a $0.10 fee will clear in that time.

I don’t know why this claim it never happened persists, except certain people who wanted to tule over bitcoin have spent millions employing an army if bots to spread the lie.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#724

Post by dehrmann »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #686
toomuchtodo wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The TransferWise model is the future of global banking imho (disclosure: I work in the financial infra space). One user account, the ability to hold a variety of currencies simultaneously, and banking info for each currency to plug into financial rails for said currency (routing/acct in US, IBAN in the EU, etc). Turns out money is just rows in a database and ISO 20022 messages, queued and processed.

I had enormous problems trying to do anything with Transferwise from Cambodia. It's still plagued with problems left over from the conventional banking system.

This loops back to one of the few things cryptocurrencies do well: they're extrajudicial, so they're often used for illegal transactions (drugs, ransom, bypassing sanctions). Bitcoin just happens to be really bad for this since the blockchain is forever.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#725

Post by arcticbull »

chris_wot wrote: post #717
arcticbull wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you met North Korea?

That bastion of great economic management and economic growth...

Indeed however Bitcoin is positioned as a way of fighting back against these administrations. However it helps literally nobody in North Korea because they just shut down their internet.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#726

Post by cambalache »

chris_wot wrote: post #710
cambalache wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For people unaware OP sounds suspiciously close to a Maduro bot. If you dont believe me, ask a Venezuelan friend of yours (regretfully it is a big diaspora now) or go to a place like r/vzla and ask around. Venezuelans in Colombia getting remitances in WU : http://sunoticia.com/inicio/a-grandes-sacrificios-e-irregula...

It would better if you addressed his arguments and not make dispersions against his person. Classic ad hominem attack.

> So, bitcoin doesn't really benefits Venezuelans, the only thing that benefits venezuelans is the localbitcoins escrow service, but this is not because its cripto or because its bitcoin, it's just because noone else offers an escrow service to sucessfully exchange currency, that's pretty much it.

This is the argument. I dont need to address anything. BTW, not that it matters but I dont hold bitcoins , I am not a trader and I dont have any association with localbitcoins, I even agreed with the points presented in the article (check my post history) now check OP's.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#727

Post by ashtonkem »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #442
ashtonkem wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ignore…

Or provide the myriad examples of why "Don't keep it on exchange" is good advice[0][1][2]. But it's not up to the advice-giver to do the due diligence. [0]: https://cryptosec.info/exchange-hacks/ [1]: https://coiniq.com/cryptocurrency-exchange-hacks/ [2]: https://selfkey.org/list-of-cryptocurrency-exchange-hacks/

You’re kind of sidestepping my point.

Yes, it’s a good idea to keep your coins off the exchange, for all the reasons you’ve provided. The issue is that keeping your money off exchange is far less convenient, which is exactly why most people keep their couns on exchanges despite the risks. If the Bitcoin community in general wants people to stop getting hacked on exchanges, they need to provide more convenient alternatives rather than just continuing to say “keep your coins off the exchange” and blaming users who get hacked for not following this advice.

It’s a bit like recommending that everyone not drive to avoid dying in car crashes. This advice is strictly speaking true; the less you drive the less likely you are to die in a car crash. But it completely ignores why people drive and therefore most people won’t listen. As a society we’ve decided that rather than asking people to not drive, it makes more sense to focus on making driving safer per mile travelled. This is a much more effective strategy at reducing driver deaths.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#728

Post by dragonwriter »

dnautics wrote: post #704
dragonwriter wrote: post #700

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > Deflation inhibits economic activity because money saved is worth more tomorrow than today even when not invested in productive enterprise. > What is the rationale for this? The rationale is explicitly stated. > Because by that token, nobody would ever buy computers, because the money saved by not buying a computer today can go into buying a better computer tomorrow. No, because then you lose out on the utility o…

Your assertions are simply not borne out by historical truth, there have been periods of history where there was no inflation or deflation, where there was plenty of investment and growth. For example, post-civil war US. Similarly the 1850-1900 sweden free banking era. Oh. And Japan. Do you seriously think there is NO productive investment in Japan currently, simply because there is no inflation? People grow and inve…

> Your assertions are simply not borne out by historical truth

What assertions?

> there have been periods of history where there was no inflation or deflation, where there was plenty of investment and growth.

That...doesn't contradict anything I've said. I have not stated or implied that, in the absence of inflation or deflation, one would not expect productive investment and growth. I have agreed with upthread claims that deflation discourages economic activity, and also pointed out that the effect you praise of deflation discouraging consumption is an example of discouraging economic activity.

> For example, post-civil war US.

You mean the 1865-1867 recession (which also featured significant deflation, not “no inflation or deflation”) or the 1869-1870 recession (ditto), or the Long Depression starting in 1873 (ditto, again.) The post Civil War 19thC USA is actually a pretty good example of the association between deflation and poor economic performance, and definitely not an example (for good or ill) of a period with “no inflation or deflation”.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#729

Post by arcticbull »

brokenkebab wrote: post #701
lumost wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the long term this definition is murkier, see the Dutch Tulip bulb bubble of the 1630s.

I'm not sure we have any definition here :-) But claim that anything is economically wothless unless there are people willing to participate in exchanging it is in fact supported (not denied as you seem to imply) by any example of speculative bubble, including of course Tulipmania.

People are using bitcoins price to justify its value. Price is not value, certainly not on a short timescale. Consider that in the short term a market is a popularity content but in the long term, it weighs actual value. This is another way of saying that the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.

If you actually attempt to assess fundamental value of Bitcoin based on anything comparable it’s value approaches zero. It’s pretty much worthless at anything it’s ever been positioned to achieve except crime and speculation.

Frankly it’s not even good at crime.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#730

Post by anonytrary »

Good points. Centralized mining and existing wealth inequality really don't allow us to escape the fundamental problems with big banks. BTC is an emergent bank where the first and wealthiest movers who own the most mining real estate act as the new big banks.

It seems that, asymptotically, bitcoin will just end up suffering from the very things it meant to fix. The whole idea behind proof-of-work was rooted in "one cpu, one vote", but we clearly see that this does not imply "one person one vote". Proof-of-stake suffers from centralization as well, albeit being a green solution.

Proof-of-I-am-a-unique-human does not exist yet and is an unsolved problem in the intersection between biology, physics, and engineering. Neuralink comes to mind as the closest existing thing that might be relevant here, but it's not even close. Until you can really guarantee that a single human can only represent a single vote, blockchain doesn't seem viable as a "fix for banks", it's just a reincarnation. Even then, nothing stops people from coming together and forming vote schemes.

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