411–420 of 1001 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Since hackers can see climate change in action and don't think its smart to burn to a lot of energy for something which hasn't proven shit over its existence and still hasn't solved a real world problem. Besides buying drugs anonymosly through tor.
You should look into Ethereum.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fiat currency is fundamentally more speculative IMO because the value is more based on government trust that something not man-made.
Maybe in theory but not in practice. Just look at the past 10 years, btc &co are 100% driven by hype and speculation and still have 0 real world usage besides being a (semi)rich people toy and a good way to launder money / buy illegal shit online.
you need to do a little bit a research, it seems...
Bitcoin is a mystery to me. Somehow it's hailed as revolutionising the economy, by replacing currency with a worse kind of currency. It feels like this is where all the "how to get rich quick" book writers and other hustle bros went and created one giant financial pyramid, which works in quite simple way: - buy bitcoin - tell everyone around how revolutionary it is, so they buy it and what you holding increases in va…
“The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that's required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust.” -Satoshi Nakamoto Feb. 2009 If this isn’t resonating with you after the past year, I don’t know. I was forced to watch my government bungle a pandemic in the worst possible way and then asked t…
That has very little to do with currency and everything to do with you not wanting to pay taxes.
You may think that COVID response has been a catastrophic waste of money but if you'd lost your job would you have claimed the increased unemployment benefits? I suspect the vast majority of people would have.
There's a lot to criticise in terms of government COVID response (and from your post you could be talking about any one of a number of governments!) but big government spending right now to stop even greater economic depression in the future is not some kind of wasteful accident, it's deliberate action to improve everyone's situation in the long term.
In a way, buying Bitcoin is a bet on the timing of quantum computing.
You can use bitcoin without being vulnerable to quantum computing attacks, you simply have to never sign a transaction from the same address more than once (which is already considered a best practise for privacy)
Bitcoin is a mystery to me. Somehow it's hailed as revolutionising the economy, by replacing currency with a worse kind of currency. It feels like this is where all the "how to get rich quick" book writers and other hustle bros went and created one giant financial pyramid, which works in quite simple way: - buy bitcoin - tell everyone around how revolutionary it is, so they buy it and what you holding increases in va…
The reason why Bitcoin is a mystery for many people is exactly because of this ^. Bitcoin is NOT a currency. It doesn't position itself as a currency. This fairytale is long gone, forget about it. Bitcoin is a store of value.
It cost $7.6M and took five years to repatriate 53,780 gold bars worth $27B back from the US to Germany.
It's >1000X faster and >10X cheaper to move that much in Bitcoin , even accounting for N>>6 confirmations.
Cryptocurrency is a blind spot where Hacker News’ normal optimism towards innovation has disappointed for a decade. May this thread be one we can reference years later as another example of “our collective opinions can be very wrong about technologies that were transformative in hindsight.” Innovators, follow regulations and go for it. Don’t let the HN crowd get you down. Few of these commenters have ever been unbank…
Doesn't the fact that bitcoin hasn't taken off yet kind of validate the reservations that HN has? If Dropbox was still at 100 active users 10 years later, would someone be complaining about the dismissive comments HN had at the launch announcement?
Oh noes, if this starts a trend, becomes widespread, and businesses start hoarding crypto tokens instead of investing in building stuff, it could cause a great depression pretty much the same way gold hoarding caused the economy to collapse in 1929. When people, businesses and banks start hording tokens instead of investing in building and maintaining the production capacity of consumables, the ratio of value of toke…
You cannot eat gold or bitcoin. The “hoarders” at some point will want to consume be it a pizza or a lambo.
Then there’s those who invest in ways to get more... what for it.. gold or bitcoin so they go out and purchase picks and shovels.
Crazy stuff, extremely complicated when I write it as such. Btw, the FED made a trivial recession into a “great” one back in 1929.
Bitcoin is a mystery to me. Somehow it's hailed as revolutionising the economy, by replacing currency with a worse kind of currency. It feels like this is where all the "how to get rich quick" book writers and other hustle bros went and created one giant financial pyramid, which works in quite simple way: - buy bitcoin - tell everyone around how revolutionary it is, so they buy it and what you holding increases in va…
« they buy it and what you holding increases in value, then tell them to do the same. » Literally the same happens to any investment: tell people to buy stock X, time share Y, precious metal Z, that it's awesome, so it gains value, etc The fact is Bitcoin/crypto is revolutionary. For example it allows merchants to cut down on fraud, since a payment received in BTC is irreversible, so chargeback fraud is impossible. I…
Bitcoin is a mystery to me. Somehow it's hailed as revolutionising the economy, by replacing currency with a worse kind of currency. It feels like this is where all the "how to get rich quick" book writers and other hustle bros went and created one giant financial pyramid, which works in quite simple way: - buy bitcoin - tell everyone around how revolutionary it is, so they buy it and what you holding increases in va…
“The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that's required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust.” -Satoshi Nakamoto Feb. 2009 If this isn’t resonating with you after the past year, I don’t know. I was forced to watch my government bungle a pandemic in the worst possible way and then asked t…
A currency is literally 'trust' - it's a social contract. it's trust in the economic system where the currency prevails.
If you don't trust it, you don't trust where it comes from.
It's impossible to have a currency that is not use widely in some economy, and it's almost impossible to not have some management of that currency. For example, if any nation officially adopted BTC as their currency, as opposed to some fiat, they would be in for a difficult ride with a complete lack of any monetary policy. Nations that use the USD are actually leveraging the value of the US system. In general, the US system has more credibility than their own, so it's a benefit, and they are generally small.
As a store of value it's monopoly money.
The 'allure of not having to trust' people is a total myth, for any currency, even the hardest ones back by gold, land etc..
Cryptocurrency is a blind spot where Hacker News’ normal optimism towards innovation has disappointed for a decade. May this thread be one we can reference years later as another example of “our collective opinions can be very wrong about technologies that were transformative in hindsight.” Innovators, follow regulations and go for it. Don’t let the HN crowd get you down. Few of these commenters have ever been unbank…
What exactly is the bull case for bitcoin? I have not seen it clearly explained. I’ve got an open mind. In more specific terms you mentioned the unbanked. How does crypto solve the problems that leave them unbanked?