41–50 of 164 posts
Maybe Bitcoin is Netscape and we're still waiting for Chrome. It's still so, so early.
I don't think anyone seems to remember the slight drama under which satoshi nakamoto had disappeared where he called people out for not really seeming to realize or respect that bitcoin was pretty much just a proof of concept
Bitcoin was simply designed to be an in game currency for a poker game, but the narrative has been co-opted by so many people that it’s become something else.
I’d love to use a stable coin for micro transactions
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This legitimately covered my keyboard in Pepsi. Kudos! edit: removed burn in all caps as this is not a Wendy's restaurant.
I’m sad to see HN become a place where people pat each other on the back for “burns”. (And I think GP makes a good point.) edit for context: parent originally started with “BURN!” before edit
To explain the derision, I don't think the GP makes a good point at all, as crypto-adherents pre-suppose that there's a common acceptance that blockchain currencies are an internet-level breakthrough.
Linked lists are useful. Merkle trees are useful. Blockchain currencies haven't so far proven a single use case they perform more usefully than existing systems.
All that the ICO craze, the NFT craze and the De-Fi craze point to is that this is a solution in search of a problem. The only reason any of the crypto-based versions of those existing concepts (IPOs, collectibles, credit) have been able to accrue funds so far is due to fraud and mania.
De-Fi could someday become useful if someone figures out a de-centralised way to handle unsecured credit, but how do you include trust in an eco-system that is based around a lack of trust? Even if someone solves that problem it won't be because of crypto, it'll be because of whatever novel idea they come up with to meet that specific need.
Anytime a bitcoin video ends up in my YouTube feed I feel like I'm being offered quantum physics lessons by Deepak Chopra.
Anyway, that's why I agree with the alchemy comment.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 b…
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…
Let's check back in ten years.
I don't know that Bitcoin-as-in-BTC will be 'the future of money' by then, but I would bet that money will continue to look more like Bitcoin than it does like today's dollar.
Like it or not, and I know a lot of you don't, cryptocurrencies aren't censorable (governments can't stop you from sending or receiving them), are hard to seize, and can't just be inflated away from storing value. These are attractive properties to a lot of people.
They are also volatile and slow energy-hogs, for the most part. The question is if those problems can be mitigated, and that strikes me as easier than fixing the bugs in government fiat money which I mentioned above.
BTC is a first mover, and has a lot of flaws relative to later entrants. It also has the bulk of the mind-share and stores the most value (for now). If they can add shielded transactions, and Lightning Network pays out, it can still win.
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.
Otherwise, the more popular it is, the less usable it is as a real currency. (As the transaction fees get bid up to higher levels if transaction throughput is limited.)
(Oh, and without a custodian, the Lightning network sucks as a bandaid for this. Maybe something like that will someday be usable but it sucks right now.... and it’s not obvious how these problems will be solved in a way that doesn’t introduce a whole bunch more game theory and/or technical/resource/usability constraints.)
Bitcoin solves the issue of trust. Bitocin itself will never work as a currency that governments can rely.
First reason for that is that governments want control over their money. There has to be a central authority for multiple reasons. Banks need bailing out? As much as I'm against bail-out, sometimes the damage of not bailing them can be far greater than not bailing them out. Need the £85k insurance that your money is safe in any bank?
Governments need control of their own currency. Bitcoin does not provide that.
I see Bitcoin more as a commodity. Something like gold, and just like gold, the supply must be finite. This is something Bitcoin provides.
There is nothing stopping a government from building their own cryptocurrency that they'll have control over, but that gets rid of the main selling point of Bitcoin, that is that you don't have to trust individuals (for the most part anyway).
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.