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

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#131

Post by alwillis » Thu, May 20, 2021, 9:04 PM UTC

    Bitcoin is a non-sovereign, hard-capped supply, global, immutable,
    decentralized digital store of value. It’s an insurance policy
    against monetary and fiscal policy irresponsibility from central
    banks and governments globally.

    -- @Travis_Kling

Bitcoin hasn't failed at becoming the future of money; the future isn't here yet.

Bitcoin went from $0 to over a $1 trillion market cap in about 10 years with no VC funding, no ad buys and with Silicon Valley and Wall Street aligned against it every step of the way.

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#132

Post by AstralStorm » Thu, May 20, 2021, 9:12 PM UTC

DennisP wrote: post #40

codegeek wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In which case it's not a casino but a confidence trick. It depends whether you trust the issuer of the stablecoin and its backing to survive a bank run. (Black Friday anyone?)

They could just disappear on you with your money, and you would be left with gas on a contract nobody wants anything to do with.

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#133

Post by alwillis » Thu, May 20, 2021, 9:14 PM UTC

garrickvanburen wrote: post #52

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 obvio…

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

It's pretty damn obvious once you objectively look at the shit show the fiat currency system has become.

It should be pretty obvious that people who work all of their lives can't retire with the money they've saved because their money loses (according to CPI) 2% per year.

Instead they have to risk their savings in the stock market or some other investment--remember savings, money markets, CDs return less than 1% interest; negative interest once you include inflation.

"Bitcoin is the Great Definancialization"—https://unchained-capital.com/blog/bitcoin-is-the-great-defi...

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#134

Post by alwillis » Thu, May 20, 2021, 9:17 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...

Bitcoin Does Not Waste Energy: https://unchained-capital.com/blog/bitcoin-does-not-waste-en...

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#135

Post by alwillis » Thu, May 20, 2021, 9:18 PM UTC

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…

Bitcoin is Not Too Slow: https://unchained-capital.com/blog/bitcoin-is-not-too-slow/

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#136

Post by AstralStorm » Thu, May 20, 2021, 9:20 PM UTC

tibiahurried wrote: post #85

Many keep saying that BTC is like gold, an edge against inflation. I disagree. I think that one of fundamental problem with inflation is that banks pay almost zero interest rates, thus USD sitting in your bank account lose value overtime. Now, what if banks were to offer decent interests rates? To at least compensate the inflation rate? Wouldn't that solve the "inflation" problem? This is possible today with DeFi and…

By stable you meant over 100% volatility and bring unable to transact on the whim of the exchange, right?

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#137

Post by alwillis » Thu, May 20, 2021, 9:21 PM UTC

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…

Bitcoin is Not Backed by Nothing: https://unchained-capital.com/blog/bitcoin-is-not-backed-by-...

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#138

Post by Robotbeat » Thu, May 20, 2021, 9:23 PM UTC

saalweachter wrote: post #123

Robotbeat wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hmmm, working the other way, if your goal is to process 100k transactions / second, with each transaction being 1/100th of a cent and your transaction fees being 1/100th of that, your budget for operating your network would be, what, $3M / year?

True centi-cent microtransactions like that is going to need probably tens of millions (or even billions) of transactions per second.

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#139

Post by eli » Thu, May 20, 2021, 9:26 PM UTC

alwillis wrote: post #135

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…

Bitcoin is Not Too Slow: https://unchained-capital.com/blog/bitcoin-is-not-too-slow/

Not sure if you meant that as a rebuttal but it concedes the point: “The bitcoin blockchain will never be a layer for mass payments”

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#140

Post by okareaman » Thu, May 20, 2021, 9:28 PM UTC

alwillis wrote: post #134

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...

Bitcoin Does Not Waste Energy: https://unchained-capital.com/blog/bitcoin-does-not-waste-en...

> Based on national averages in the U.S., the bitcoin network consumes as much power as approximately 6 million homes. Yeah, it is definitely a lot of power, but it is also what secures and backs the bitcoin network.

> Bitcoin Does Not Waste Energy

Please come up with an algorithm for Bitcoin that does not use so much energy because if one exists, then Bitcoin wastes energy. I am certain that Bitcoin is not the crypto that will win in the long term if it sticks to PoW, so I probably don't need to waste my energy opposing it.