Is Bitcoin a Scam?

Moderate CPI inflation is necessary for a productive economy.

Fiat currency also has the nice property of being able to be used as money (payment for goods and services). So no, a well managed fiat currency can be extremely useful.

Maybe. It is definitely looks a lot like a ponzi scheme too me. And it is nearly useless and immorally wasteful.

I worked with some guys and I could never work out why they were doing things the way they were. I didn't really interact with what they were doing that much so I just assumed they were experts in the area and I just didn't understand. Overtime I ended up working with them more and more and I started looking at what problems they were solving and how they were approaching it. The more I looked the more I didn't understand their approach, and slowly it dawned on me. They're not geniuses doing things at an incredibly advanced level that goes over my head. They were actually doing really stupid stuff and I didn't understand it, because it was insane. What they were really doing - in my opinion - was cargo cult software development practices. They'd worked with complex well designed systems that they hadn't really understood and were reproducing a weird facsimile of it.

That's very much how I feel about Bitcoin. The more I see and the more I understand the less I believe any of the peoples explanations. Not least because if you ask 5 different Bitcoin proponents, you'll get 5 completely different answer about why it's valuable - from the unlikely (USD is going to inflate like we're living in Venezuela), to the untrue (BTC is decentralized), to the unprovable (BTC is digital gold).

Sometimes the reason the explanations don't make sense is because they're not right - and the alternative that BTC is a bubble or manipulated, atleast needs to be considered.

I have some reservations about Bitcoin but I understand it a heck of a lot better than the reporter interviewed here.

That was painful to listen to and a stark reminder of Gell-Mann amnesia.

The UK's FCA took the right step in banning consumer investments in crypto derivative products, which isn't remotely the same thing as purchasing the underlying assets without leverage.

There's plenty more to nitpick about the simplifications he uses losing fundamental aspects that undergird the system and make it work.

It's fascinating to watch naïve journalists and the HN crowd wring their hands year after year about a new technology that enables a cohort of low-trusting individuals and institutions to defect in a game theoretic sense from the unwritten rules of Western society and economics. A possibility that simply didn't exist before, and which Bitcoin first enabled.

My gut sense is that if people had a wider world view, grew up with and truly knew people from across the spectrum of humanity, and perhaps were keener students of world history they would hold an appreciation and fascination of Bitcoin rather than reflexively ostriching at new technology that questions the status quo. You don't have to love it or like it, but unemotional fascination is warranted.

At any rate I desperately wish the level of discourse on Bitcoin was higher here. It's embarrassing to read HN threads on Bitcoin, arguably fremdscham inducing.

I think they are all problems searching for solutions. Take smart contracts for instance, I am not sure if they are better than any BPM (Business Process Model) or cheaper.