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The first Bitcoin post on HN
31–40 of 302 posts
Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN
#32It's really not fair to dig these things up and call people haters for doubting it. I bet the list of failed companies and "haters" who called it accurately is much much bigger. Although I do like the nostalgic value of these posts.
It's really easy to be right >90% of the time, if 100% of the time you predict a new technology will fail.
Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN
#33That four-year-old submission has just two comments: one expressing doubt, one expressing optimism. Interestingly, despite growing worldwide adoption of Bitcoin, comments about it on HN continue to be more or less evenly split between doubters and optimists. And I wouldn't be surprised if comments to this submission are evenly split between those same two camps. No amount of evidence or reasoning seems to persuade ei…
But it is not that black and white, is it?
While it is quite clear that Bitcoin has "value" as long as people are willing to trade it (i.e., indefinitely), there is still no reason to assume that it will ever stop having these extreme fluctuations.
To the contrary, I'd say that, as time progresses, we observe Bitcoin having the same problems that the gold standard had, mixed with an additional proneness to speculation.
Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
and one [dead] comment: ram1024 1655 days ago | link [dead] | fold i'm having trouble wrapping my head around the logistics of this...
it looks like a spam comment.
Not really: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ram1024
Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN
#35Here's the first popular post (with 20+ comments) referencing Bitcoin on HN:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1532670 - Bitcoin P2P Cryptocurrency | 1217 days ago | 24 comments
Some other early, popular posts about Bitcoin:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1942708 - Imagine your computer as a wallet full of Bitcoins| 1088 days ago | 36 comments
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1998144 - How to Get Started with Bitcoins | 1072 days ago | 47 comments
Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, I didn't like Dropbox then and I still don't like it. I wonder how many people who make bold public statements about things ever change their mind? Or if they just become entrenched in their opinions.
Why not? What's not to like? As far as a hosted shared drive goes, Dropbox does a great job.
You need to install propietary software to use it.
Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN
#37I quite liked the polarity of the 2 comments in the post .. Hence I posted it !
Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN
#38How many people had the slightest clue that books would be replaced by Kindles, CDs by iPODs, tablets selling as much as laptops. The comments show that people underestimated the impact bitcoin would make. I still believe its just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Bitcoin.
Wow! Books surely have not been replaced by Kindles! Not by a long shot. 40% of readers still use only print books.
Here's some random data to back that up.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/blog/en/blog/2013/03/25/print-b...
Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN
#39How many people had the slightest clue that books would be replaced by Kindles, CDs by iPODs, tablets selling as much as laptops. The comments show that people underestimated the impact bitcoin would make. I still believe its just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Bitcoin.
I knew all of those things as soon as those devices came out.
Not kidding. And I don't see how others can't see them either.
But that is the nature of perception. You either perceive something or you don't and it's difficult to tell someone "there is a ship out there!" when their eyesight is too crappy to discern it. They end up having to trust you and trust is problematic.
Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN
#40jdoliner's comment is interesting, because it's almost true. At the time, hardly anyone could find faith in the currency. But what he failed to understand that if "someone" could find faith in the currency, then others would follow.
It's an interesting property of markets that they can seemingly boostrap themselves, just so long as there is support during the initial growth stage. You don't have to believe in Bitcoins to trade in them, you just have to believe someone wants them. This might be why black markets and transaction privacy are so essential to making the currency work. Since there are a large number of people who need to make their payments private, the rest of the market believes that the currency has intrinsic value in its exclusivity in certain transactions.