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

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#51

Post by jamal-kumar » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:48 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'm finding it to be used a hell of a lot more in countries with precarious economies like where I've been spending most of my adult life. In brazil especially I've seen a lot of facilitation of adoption of crypto. I know because I've developed the systems myself, from everything to paying your phone bill to bus tickets, although bitcoin is hardly the only or best option for these things

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#52

Post by garrickvanburen » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:48 PM UTC

thisisbrians wrote: post #2

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

I recently used this analogy to describe why I’m bearish on crypto.

When Netscape Navigator was released, it was clear and obvious this was the future (and if anything, underpromised based on where we are today).

Within 4years of Navigators release, I was making my fulltime living building websites.

The iPhone was another immediate “this is obviously the future” technology.

13 years into Bitcoin, it’s still not obvious.

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#53

Post by macacobranco » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:48 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

Volatile is the only reasonably thing you said

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#54

Post by RIMR » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:49 PM UTC

jasonlaramburu wrote: post #46

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…

Also anyone who questions the panacea of BTC is labeled as a peddler of 'FUD.' Very much a cult like mentality.

Once "Have fun being poor" started becoming a battle cry, I realized how completely perverted the original concept had become.

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#55

Post by RichardHeart » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:49 PM UTC

Bitcoin crashed again! This time 55% in 35 days from $65k April 12th (Coinbase IPO) to $30k yesterday. It is as we speak only up 400,000,000% now from a penny a decade ago to $40k now. It will continue to fail and suck and destroy the environment at higher and higher prices. Proof of stake is already a proven successful replacement for Proof of work and saves the environment. This makes some people very angry though, because, well, uh, because they don't own any. Cryptocurrency is 99% scams. That 1% though. It really is changing the world. I'm a biased piece of trash founder in the space though, so don't listen to anything I say.

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#56

Post by sthnblllII » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:49 PM UTC

okareaman wrote: post #36

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...

And who is to blame for so few transactions fitting in a single block? What is the energy consumption of the petrodollar-backed wars in the middle east? Presenting numbers without discussing the alternative is sophistic misdirection.

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#57

Post by timdaub » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:50 PM UTC

I don't follow Bitcoin's software development much, but to anyone familiar with the matter it should be clear that Bitcoin and it's community are rather conservative on "technological improvements".

But I've been surprised recently when I read that taproot had been merged into Bitcoin Core. An extension that's supposed to enable smart contracts.

I guess one day we'll see the fiat event of Bitcoin, when consuming energy will be removed from its algorithm. I hope it happens sooner rather than later.

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#58

Post by marcosdumay » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:50 PM UTC

colordrops wrote: post #33

paulryanrogers wrote: post #11

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…

Well, it doesn't. It replaces a fuzzy set of middleman with another.

And there isn't enough attention to the Bitcoin governance to make it better than the government-based system. Cryptocoin people don't even want to discuss governance, because they like to believe there's nothing to govern and nobody governing.

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#59

Post by conception » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:50 PM UTC

I keep running into the issue that blockchain seems to have very few legal uses that a centralized database isn't better for. Remittances seems to be the best use case with actual usage. But that doesn't really need anything. Every thing else seems like tech demos with no real world application or ways to do illegal things more efficiently.

Is there a use case someone really likes that blockchain seems like the best tool for the job?

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#60

Post by elliekelly » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:50 PM UTC

bassdropvroom wrote: post #49

I still don't understand this mindset of Bitcoin becoming the future of money. It isn't. It never was meant to be, and it never advertised itself as such. 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…

If bitcoin truly solved the issue of trust there would be no need for all of the various intermediaries who have popped up to insert themselves into the transactions. Also, there wouldn’t be nearly as many scams.