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Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

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Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#111

Post by FabHK »

thisisbrians wrote: post #2

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

Well... the utility of the web was evident pretty early on.

Gopher was released in 1991, the first web browser (WorldWideWeb) also in 1991, Mosaic in 1993. The first German online bookshop, Telebuch, went online in 1991 (via BTX), and was on the web in 1995; Bloomberg.com, IMDB, Wired was online 1993, Amazon was founded 1994, Google 1998, Napster 1999, Frienster 2002, MySpace 2003, Facebook 2004 - all within 13 years of the invention of the WWW.

It is now 13 years after the first release of Bitcoin, and what do we have (except dark web narcotics markets, and exchanges that take a cut around 50x greater than stock exchanges)?

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#112

Post by throwkeep »

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…

> with zero understanding of how it works, naturally

Perhaps you don't understand it either, if you think it has failed.

"Few understand" is a meme and said tongue in cheek, but there's truth to it. To actually understand Bitcoin and crypto, you have to spend 100+ hours on it. Of course few put that kind of time in. Most default to either a blind acolyte or naysayer, depending on whether they got in early or not, or depending on what position is popular with their political tribe.

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#113

Post by golergka »

elorant wrote: post #50
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.

Most drug transactions are made offline. People who regularly buy drugs have a trusted source with whom they transact for years.

Well, I guess it differs by country. I haven't heard of anyone meeting someone in person to buy drugs for about 5 years now. It something that doesn't happen around here anymore.

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#114

Post by doggosphere »

Salgat wrote: post #107
doggosphere wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The entire power of a modern market democracy rests in the ability to control its currency. State monopoly over money is a good thing or a bad thing? > If you remove that power, the state itself has no legitimacy. We've had "legitimate" states since the dawn of time, before fiat currencies. Many kings and republics ruled and minted coins, but they were always limited by what they had, and could not arbitrarily crea…

Fiat's main advantage is monetary policy, arguably the most powerful economic tool a country has. I highly doubt countries like China and the US will willingly give that up. The reason Bitcoin has survived so long is because outside the black market it is only used for speculation (at least, in any practical amounts). If a highly deflationary coin like Bitcoin became a currency, we'd be screwed and very vulnerable to…

Nation states will never give up the ability to print money, and fiat will always exist.

But a deflationary asset has utility, and ironically central banks will want to hold it as a reserve asset. They'll just be the last ones to do so.

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#115

Post by buffalobuffalo »

Robotbeat wrote: post #48
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.

Well, this is baked into the limited number of transactions per second. At 10 transactions per second max, the usefulness as a day to day currency is inversely proportional to its popularity. Our favorite joke coin, DogeCoin, does 10 times better at 100/sec with faster blocks, but it’s still too slow. Visa is like 2000-100,000 transactions per second depending on if you use average or theoretical maximum. Anything wh…

It's not just the speed, it's also the fees. You ideally want something that has really minimal fees, so that you can send $.0001 without paying 10x that in fees. The ability to process micro-transactions cheaply and at scale could actually have the transforming affect that bitcoin was originally after.

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#116

Post by FireBeyond »

sthnblllII wrote: post #56
okareaman wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The "alternative" to bitcoin is the "energy consumption of wars"?

I think you're going to have to provide a bit more evidence, there.

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#117

Post by Robotbeat »

buffalobuffalo wrote: post #115
Robotbeat wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, this is baked into the limited number of transactions per second. At 10 transactions per second max, the usefulness as a day to day currency is inversely proportional to its popularity. Our favorite joke coin, DogeCoin, does 10 times better at 100/sec with faster blocks, but it’s still too slow. Visa is like 2000-100,000 transactions per second depending on if you use average or theoretical maximum. Anything wh…

It's not just the speed, it's also the fees. You ideally want something that has really minimal fees, so that you can send $.0001 without paying 10x that in fees. The ability to process micro-transactions cheaply and at scale could actually have the transforming affect that bitcoin was originally after.

Right. That’s what Satoshi wrote in their paper.

But throughput and fees are related, of course. As I noted, low transaction throughput combined with high popularity means very high fees. Fees get bid up. So to maintain low fees while having high popularity, you need high transaction throughput.

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#118

Post by bob33212 »

colordrops wrote: post #82
bob33212 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want a middle man in most of my transactions. Just imagine if a gas station changed their prices to ounces instead of gallons and you filled up your gas tank for $3000 before you realized the scam. With no middle man that money is gone. With a credit card you can refuse the charge and tell the credit card company who will ban that seller from their network and not charge you.

Sure, you do for some things, as most people do. And many people find a lot of value in no middleman for other things. This is not contradictory.

The only transactions where a middle man are a problem for me is the government and taxes. I would like to be able to give someone money without reporting it to the IRS. I would like to be able to buy weed in the mail, but the government doesn't allow that. Crypto doesn't stop laws from existing.

People love to bring up Venezuela, but what happens when that government finds out someone has bought a house with crypto?

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#119

Post by s7atic »

bob33212 wrote: post #67
colordrops wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I want a middle man in most of my transactions. Just imagine if a gas station changed their prices to ounces instead of gallons and you filled up your gas tank for $3000 before you realized the scam. With no middle man that money is gone. With a credit card you can refuse the charge and tell the credit card company who will ban that seller from their network and not charge you.

There are escrow services for blockchain transactions; the difference to digital fiat is that you are not forced to use a middleman.

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#120

Post by newaccount2021 »

doggosphere wrote: post #96
newaccount2021 wrote: post #34

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 wh…

> The entire power of a modern market democracy rests in the ability to control its currency. State monopoly over money is a good thing or a bad thing? > If you remove that power, the state itself has no legitimacy. We've had "legitimate" states since the dawn of time, before fiat currencies. Many kings and republics ruled and minted coins, but they were always limited by what they had, and could not arbitrarily crea…

Kings transacted gold, which can be debased, hidden, and cut up, but there is no practical, economic way to destroy it.

Bitcoin can be destroyed, cheaply. It isn't the government-proof asset you think it is.

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