Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money • Hacker News Board

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#31

Post by DennisP » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:40 PM UTC

Shacklz wrote: post #25

Bitcoin can't die soon enough. The initial idea and the ideology behind it is really admirable, but it was done as a proof of concept and failed terribly. But instead of "alright, PoC done, does not scale, let's move on to something better", too many people can't or don't want to move on because there's too much money on the line. I find it personally exhausting - I had a coworker until recently (he left) who was a s…

Lots of people say "PoC done, does not scale, let's move on to something better," it's just that core Bitcoin devs and r/bitcoin mods kicked all those people out, so they've moved to other blockchains.

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#32

Post by wmeredith » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:40 PM UTC

golergka wrote: post #22

Drugs. I feel like I'm making the same comment on any of these articles, so I'll just post this one word from now on. You can't buy drugs without bitcoin. A significant portion of all bitcoin transactions in the world are going to Russian drug marketplace Hydra. This forces bitcoin on many, many people who are not technology or finance enthusiasts, but just want to make a transaction.

> You can't buy drugs without bitcoin

This is patently false. It also doesn't even make sense to say. Bitcoin is not anonymous, I'm not sure how this misunderstanding stays alive considering that it's the exact opposite of that. All transactions and wallet ID's are stored in the blockchain forever.

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#33

Post by colordrops » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:40 PM UTC

paulryanrogers wrote: post #11

colordrops wrote: post #3

No it's not, but the cryptocurrency revolution it kicked off, is.

Curious what fundamentals CCs bring to the table over traditional fiat, digital or physical. Because the downsides look brutal: difficult to understand, fragile, non-reversible (sometimes a pro but often a con), expensive to operate, volatile, incompatible with KYC (sometimes a pro but often a con), etc

The very clear and main thing it brings is getting rid of the middleman, at least for transactions, whether it be governments or businesses. This is a bigger deal than it sounds, as the middle man defines most policy around transactions, whether it be who can trade, when, and how, which creates huge imbalances in fairness and accessibility, and also can be enforced at nation state borders. These may be seen as cons by many, but to be frank, many find great value in these properties, and because it's a more efficient marketplace it will naturally take root.

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#34

Post by newaccount2021 » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

It was never in any danger of becoming the future of money.

The entire power of a modern market democracy rests in the ability to control its currency. If you remove that power, the state itself has no legitimacy. Bitcoin was never ever going to be blessed as an alternative to the USD, no matter how much sense it made on paper.

Bitcoin is a pure sentiment asset. It rises when people think it should rise, and falls when people think it should fall. The value is neither reflective of productive work or a legitimate arbitrary power. It was and is a beanie-baby/baseball card economy and it will never be anything else.

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#35

Post by flyGuyOnTheSly » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

bhk wrote: post #27

I find it remarkable that about half of the 14 articles that I see linked on the Bloomberg home page "above the fold" (in my browser window) are cryptocurrency-related.

Which is obviously evidence of a complete and total failure.

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#36

Post by okareaman » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

TedShiller wrote: post #12

Funny how people talk about the problem of Bitcoin using a lot of energy but then they live in a big house, drive an SUV, and fly to far away places on vacation. Your life style is the problem, not crypto.

A single bitcoin transaction uses roughly 707.6 kilowatt-hours of electrical energy–equivalent to the power consumed by an average U.S. household over 24 days, according to Digiconomist

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2021/03/09/bil...

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#37

Post by xeromal » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

josefresco wrote: post #9

thisisbrians wrote: post #2

Maybe Bitcoin is Netscape and we're still waiting for Chrome. It's still so, so early.

> we're still waiting for Chrome Dear God no. Wake me when the "Firefox" of crypto is available.

So 10% usage?

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#38

Post by cryptoz » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:42 PM UTC

yelnatz wrote: post #14

It was getting there. I remember Bitcoin was getting a wider adoption for payment back in 2013ish. I paid for my domain from namecheap in Bitcoin back then. But it then blew up and everyone treated it more as a store of value and it made all the shops stop accepting it as payment due to its volatility.

I spent .2btc to buy a $50 domain name at one point around 2013, that I only used for a year or something. Woooops. But hey, I figured, the future of money, let's do it! Oh well.

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#39

Post by Ensorceled » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:42 PM UTC

bitexploder wrote: post #10

I am not a huge Bitcoin fan, and don't really have a strong opinion on it. It has some real problems, such as its energy usage, and slow transactions. All the technical complaints aside, which are legitimate, these news outlets write some of the worst pieces on Bitcoin. They are hopelessly biased in many cases and there are a lot of Bitcoin bears that eagerly celebrate its demise or anything negative around it. Sort…

This is an opinion piece about the volatility of BitCoin based upon its wild fluctuation due to some tweets by Elon Musk.

It's biased because it's an opinion piece, but do you have an actual counter to that main concern?

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#40

Post by DennisP » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:42 PM UTC

codegeek wrote: post #28

yelnatz wrote: post #14

It was getting there. I remember Bitcoin was getting a wider adoption for payment back in 2013ish. I paid for my domain from namecheap in Bitcoin back then. But it then blew up and everyone treated it more as a store of value and it made all the shops stop accepting it as payment due to its volatility.

Pretty much. If bitcoin (or any cypto) can be a stable currency, I would jump on it. Otherwise, it is just a gambling tool at the moment. I don't gamble with things I don't understand (unless I am in Vegas and willing to lose a few bucks for fun). So it is a hard pass for me at the moment.

There are stablecoins on top of Ethereum. Some are backed by off-chain bank accounts, others are based on price feeds and on-chain derivatives over ETH.