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Bitcoin is a disaster

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Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#961

Post by alwillis »

arcticbull wrote: post #901
wolco2 wrote: post #890

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they magic beans or just beans? A bitcoin address gives you a unique global address decentralizated that funds can be sent to. There is utility to that function. Using your description the internet is a magic place faeries built that provides no usefulness because it's virtual.

No, Bitcoin provides no value because it's bad at everything it tries to be. It's a bad store of value (-86% swings 3x in the last few years), it's a bad currency (7tx/sec) and it's bad for the environment (as much power consumption as Chile). The internet provides utility. Bitcoin provides speculation and crime.

It's a bad store of value (-86% swings 3x in the last few years), it's a bad currency (7tx/sec)

Bitcoin is the best performing asset of the past years compared to stocks, gold, commodities, etc.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#962

Post by alwillis »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #889
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…

How do people use bitcoin effectively when it has $9 transaction fees from having its block size limited? Do you mean cryptocurrency in general?

The fee someone pays to get a transaction into a block is similar to what passengers pay to be on the same flight—everyone pays something different.

You could have paid $300 while the person sitting next to you could have significantly more or less, depending on a whole host of factors.

Same with bitcoin: someone could have paid $1.50 for a transaction in the same block as your $9 transaction, depending on its size and how quickly the sender needed to have it confirmed. Someone also paid $.50 to be in that block but they were okay with waiting for an hour before it would be confirmed.

A dashboard such as https://bitbo.io will show you fee estimates.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#963

Post by alwillis »

ric2b wrote: post #852
arcticbull wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about what other technology is 12 years old you’d call “nascent” - 12 years is an eternity in tech. The iPhone is 12 years old and bears only a passing semblance to what was launched. Bitcoin is practically identical. The first ETF launched in 1993, and 12 years later they had 400 billion in net asset value - 533 adjusted for inflation. Your argument that the growth is unprecedented is specious.

> Think about what other technology is 12 years old you’d call “nascent” Cars, Steam engines, Airplanes, Trains, the Internet, Radio, Phones, Mobile phones, Smart phones, Cinema, TV's, basically anything that is actually new technology? I actually can't think of any new technology that reached maturity within 12 years of it's original prototype. > The first ETF launched in 1993, ETF's are a contract, they're not tech…

As I type this, bitcoin's market cap is a little over $554 billion.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#964

Post by Siira »

yarcob wrote: post #829
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personal experience: not only bitcoin was the only practical way I was able to receive funds in Russia from an Indonesian client, it was cheaper than just one leg of converting Indonesian currency (to USD). Think of it. Buying bitcoin, sending and selling resulted being cheaper than just buying USD. The spread was that much lower. (It was in a relatively static price period in summer 2016) And regular banks just didn…

Did you actually try multiple banks? Is the banking ststem really that broken in Indonesia? My experience is that bank fees vary greatly. My (limited) experience with US banks is that they have huge hidden fees and you get really bad currency exchange rates. I'm talking about 8% of funds miraculously disappearing during currency exchange. I don't understand why anybody would bother going via USD. My Austrian bank on…

> That broken

The crux of the issue. It’s tragic how the new woke fads exaggerate and even imagine plights for minorities near themselves, while completely ignoring big crises further away.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#965

Post by xapata »

stale2002 wrote: post #944
xapata wrote: post #932

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, I think China is a good example of how the government can have its cake and eat it, too. When you say, "lots of people," how many are we talking about? The majority? If so, you'd think the government would just give up trying to have control, it wouldn't be worth the effort. Remember, we're not talking about trying to have a technology that a few hobbyists can use. The goal is widespread usage, enoug…

> When you say, "lots of people," how many are we talking about? Enough that this whole original idea that you stated which was "Can't the government simply shut down the internet", is obviously not true. The real world examples of real world countries, show that places like china are not "shutting down the internet", and that such an idea is obviously stupid. There are tons of stories that you could make up in your…

I'll ignore the "obviously stupid" comment and let you Google for examples.

I agree that it's not worth the effort for governments to shut down Bitcoin, at the moment. The US just confiscated $1 billion in coin. They're pretty happy with the pseudonyms it seems.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#966

Post by Siira »

xapata wrote: post #36
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…

> No VAT on bitcoin transactions Sounds like a defect in the technology to me. A good currency should be able to support the full range of social policies (like VAT). One of the problems of the Euro is not being able to inflate different countries within the Eurozone at different rates. If Bitcoin were ever to become popular for regular transactions within many countries, it'd be a fiscal policy disaster. Pretty soon…

> A good currency should be able to support the full range of social policies

This is not true. An infrastructure that does not even support oppressive policies can be (and often is) better. It’s similar to how it’s better that you can’t plug the USB wrongly.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#967

Post by Siira »

OOPMan wrote: post #631

People here talking about Venezuela seem to be ignoring the fact that maybe if that country wasn't such a disaster politically bottom-of-barrel solutions like Bitcoin wouldn't be needed. If the best excuse for Bitcoin is that it's the only thing that works when a governed society has broken down almost completely then maybe it's better to think about how we can avoid that kind of breakdown than it is to invest energy…

Yes, magic is much better than Bitcoin. Unfortunately, magic doesn’t exist, while dysfunctional governments have existed from the dawn of man.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#968

Post by lottin »

darawk wrote: post #922
lottin wrote: post #808

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, that's not sovereignty. Sovereignty refers to the highest authority in a territory. Yes, in traditional banking, customers cede control of the money they deposit with the bank to the bank. They do not cede the ownership of that money, which they continue to own. Now, transferring money without making a deposit is possible with any currency, not just BTC. You make it sound like it's a feature of BTC but it's not.…

Highest authority means actual physical control. When your money is in a bank, the highest authority is the bank. Not you. This is the literal definition of sovereignty, and it's used in many digital contexts, not just crypto. E.g. 'self-sovereign identity'. This isn't a word usage made up by crypto, it's quite common, and this is its meaning.

Possession and ownership are two very different things. Physical control can be transferred without loss of ownership. This is what happens when somebody rents a car, or when somebody deposits money with a bank. Sovereignty is a concept very specific to political science. It doesn't make a lot of sense to use it in other contexts. You can use it, if you want, but it's usually a sign that the person using it doesn't really know what they're talking about.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#969

Post by Siira »

progval wrote: post #310
spottybanana wrote: post #184

If you think Bitcoin is bad, don't use it. Bitcoin is free market protocol. Often in free market it comes down to preferences, and this kind of opinion pieces are just a statement that I don't like what other people don't like, and other people shouldn't like what they like.

Bitcoin is also bad for you even if you don't use it. Greenhouse gas emission affects everyone, for example. So it makes sense to try to convince others to stop using it as well.

So is every other animal activity, e.g., dancing.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#970

Post by Siira »

oblio wrote: post #221
smabie wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of mined gold in existence is not used for industrial purposes.

But industrial use is big (see the link from the other poster, 37% in the US), and growing. Gold is a very useful material and not only for its shininess.

(Irrelevant Truth Rhetorical Fallacy)
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