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In Defense of Bitcoin Maximalism

vitalik.ca

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Re: In Defense of Bitcoin Maximalism

#51

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

seibelj wrote: post #46
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it's cool if you take part in a pyramid scheme because you're taking on risk?

I don't think crypto is a pyramid scheme and your statement is an opinion not a fact.

> Putting a significant amount of money into something that the vast majority of "intelligent" people say is a scam (as you do), is reward for taking risk.

I don't think this is any more a fact than my statement. I'm merely trying to point out that you seem to be saying it's ok to invest in what people perceive as a scam (my example was pyramid schemes) because it's an investment.

Re: In Defense of Bitcoin Maximalism

#52

Post by valcron1000 »

zzzeek wrote: post #5
buildbuildbuild wrote: post #3

It's no coincidence that some of the strongest criticism against cryptocurrency happens here, in a community mostly of banked, relatively prosperous people in stable countries. May you never personally experience being unbanked or otherwise financially oppressed.

correct me if I'm wrong but people using bitcoin in oppressed countries will basically be rendered penniless by simply cutting off network access. source: https://lukeplant.me.uk/blog/posts/the-technological-case-ag...

"Simply" is a pretty strong word. I live in a coutry where international transfers are pretty much banned. The government can easily freeze my bank account, but disconnect me entirely from the internet is on another level of difficulty.

Re: In Defense of Bitcoin Maximalism

#53

Post by chinathrow »

> Crypto-assets like Bitcoin have real cultural and structural advantages that make them powerful assets worth holding and using.

Not for me. Why would an asset, which I can lose, have no direct control over it or even better, whose storage places are hacked on a weekly basis, earn my trust? And no, I am not even starting about the energy waste most crypto-assets are.

Re: In Defense of Bitcoin Maximalism

#54

Post by game_the0ry »

enkid wrote: post #22
game_the0ry wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trade offs - bitcoin is not a free lunch. If you want to be fully sovereign with your wealth, you have to accept full responsibility of that wealth. If that is not a responsibility you want bc you believe it is too risky, then do not buy bitcoin. Or, you can trust centralized authority (a bank) with that responsibility; obviously, the trade off is you lose full control of your wealth. Additionally, how you approach o…

What does being fully sovereign mean for something that's only used as a medium of exchange? It's value is always only meaningful when at least two people agree on it's value. At best you only control half of the equation.

> It's value is always only meaningful when at least two people agree on it's value.

Is it not totally obvious that bitcoin has market value?

If not, consider these points - bitcoin was not created by MIT and Uchicago STEM and econ PhDs, it was born out of an anonymous internet "white paper." It proved itself as a type of "money" in the internet dark markets, and continues to do so. It wasn't "lab tested," it was tested in the real world. When China banned crypto, the price of bitcoin did not crash. Only authoritarian countries have banned it, while some US lawmakers hold bitcoin and Gensler (chairmen of the SEC) taught a class at MIT about crypto.

These should be very compelling aspects of bitcoin.

Re: In Defense of Bitcoin Maximalism

#55

Post by giraffe_lady »

seibelj wrote: post #29
astoor wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my view, how you earn your money affects how you value it. Many with cryptocurrency haven't had to do any hard honest work to obtain it, e.g. the early joiners who have just had to wait as their "wealth" accrues from later joiners, or even newer joiners who have made their "wealth" from scams or rugpulls or wash trading to artificially inflate the value of their NFTs or whatever. These people tend not to value the…

Putting a significant amount of money into something that the vast majority of "intelligent" people say is a scam (as you do), is reward for taking risk. No different than an investor looking at small cap stocks to pick winners and throwing a lot of money in. It seems you are criticizing the concept of investing.

I don't think that's what they're claiming at all. The "no different than" is doing the work here but I don't think it's warranted.

An investor in that situation has to (presumably, and I'm ignorant so maybe not) do work in doing research, having enough domain and industry knowledge to evaluate what a "winner" looks like in a given industry, understand how valuations are formed and what can make them wrong, etc etc.

Some of that is done by crypto people sure, but the difference between a big success and losing your money there seems a lot more luck-based than in normal investing.

People have been making the argument that investing is gambling for decades at this point, and I don't think that's completely wrong but it is very hard to draw the line. I am comfortable putting crypto trading on the gambling side of that line, and most forms of professional investing probably on the non-gambling side.

They are possibly a lot closer than I think they are, but I don't think that speaks well for either activity!

Re: In Defense of Bitcoin Maximalism

#56

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

smeej wrote: post #50
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> systems that allow you to claw back stolen funds using backup keys for example Doesn't that remove the trust in the transaction? Isn't the one of the promised joys of these things that, short of a fork, the transaction is immutable and that people don't have to worry about fraud in the form of charge backs or their money disappearing once they have it?

Not necessarily. If you know the mechanism for potential reversal of the transaction and trust the process responsible for making the decision about when to reverse a transaction, you've known the rules and the context from the start. It would have to be a well-designed process to earn your trust, but it's not an unsolvable problem. To my knowledge, there aren't any smart contracts that have implemented such a system…

Well, I'd be interest in how this turns out - the only way I can envision it is either both parties need to agree to a return (which can already be done by agreement), one party has to agree (taking agency away from the other), or a "higher power" needs to agree (removing the freedom from governance that these technologies propose to offer). In most of these cases there's self-determination being lost.

Re: In Defense of Bitcoin Maximalism

#57

Post by ALittleLight »

seibelj wrote: post #46
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it's cool if you take part in a pyramid scheme because you're taking on risk?

I don't think crypto is a pyramid scheme and your statement is an opinion not a fact.

Literally the only way you can profit with crypto is if people keep buying in at higher prices. It's the perfect instantiation of a pyramid scheme.

Re: In Defense of Bitcoin Maximalism

#58

Post by toyg »

cinntaile wrote: post #18
rideontime wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand your comment. Is there a meaningful difference between having "access to your wallet's funds" and being able to "transact"?

Well the parent claimed they would be rendered penniless. If you're temporarily unable to transact you're not penniless.

You "just have a cashflow problem", or are "temporarily embarrassed for money". In other words, you broke.

Re: In Defense of Bitcoin Maximalism

#60

Post by rvz »

Cobragri wrote: post #19
tromp wrote: post #7

> Blockchains sacrifice privacy, requiring even crazier and more expensive technology to get that privacy back. The Mimblewimble protocol [0] bucks that trend, providing more privacy at the base layer while being less expensive in terms of the historical size of transactions [1]. > a focus on simplicity and deep mathematical purity: a 1 MB block size, a 21 million coin limit A supply of 50/(2^{height/210000}) coins e…

''Eth fails miserably '' Ethereum failed already at beginning. A blockchain; Mutable ,premined and ICO is already there. Eth is the target for regulations and censorship sooner or later. And i agree with that scalability is very important part of decentralization. Privacy and scalability well balanced in MimbleWimble.

Well Ethereum has enabled a sea of scams and a carnage of Web3 hype, ICOs, NFTs, Tokens, DAOs, DeFi rug-pulls and everything else using so-called 'smart contracts' (that are not what they say they are) that all ruined it from the very start.

90% of the creations on Ethereum are useless and there is little there that is worth looking at. From the start, it was not designed to scale at all hence its sluggish throughput and high fees. Now it is going to become even more centralized when it moves to PoS.

Might as well drop the decentralization claims then.

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