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The first Bitcoin post on HN

news.ycombinator.com

101–110 of 302 posts

Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN

#101
post #90

and let's revisit this discussion 5 years from now. right now there is so much fluctutation within BC it might as well be tulips. maybe it will become a stable currency, maybe it won't.

Hate when people use the tulips comparison. The basic protocol of bitcoin that allows people to send value anywhere in the world and solves the double spend problem must have some value unto itself. I don't know it's worth $0.10, $100, or $1000000 per bitcoin to use the protocol but to compare it to a plant seems kinda ridiculous.

But those attributes can be replicated by another crypto-currency right? So the distinct edge of both bitcoins and tulips are the maddened crowds. They have that in common.

Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN

#102
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value of a currency lies entirely in the perception of that value. I don't consider bitcoin different from a traditional currency, except that its rate of production is known in advance. It will keep having value because by now enough people think it does.

Bitcoin is different in that is the purest form of a fiat currency in the sense that it is backed by nothing and thus has no intrinsic value whatsoever. Traditional currencies, on the other hand, are at least fractionally backed by (usually) gold and government bonds which in itself are backed by a government's ability to tax its citizens. There is also a second problem in that BTC is deflationary by design. Deflatio…

The deflation risk can be solved, I think, if the core developers and core decision-makers (key movers and shakers in the community, like miners and vendors) all agree to a "split" event moment where every 1 previous BTC transmutes into say 1000 subsequent BTC (or whatever, picking numbers out of thin air). Making it easier to get BTC because old values which were too close to the smallest fraction floor now become splittable and more easily transferrable again. The core folks driving Bitcoin at the moment are already well aware of this risk scenario and what the set of decent mitigation actions can be. This mitigation/evolution is not unlike when key folks in the Internet community realized that IPv4 would run out one day and thus something with a much bigger pool of addresses would be needed: IPv6. A similar hack is possible with Bitcoin too, or with any other e-currency or cryptocurrency. It's all just software. We can make it do anything we want, revise it, migrate to something else. Everything's based on trust and honor system anyway, even the notion of physical property ownership in RL: a home is only "yours" as long as your neighbors/community/government continues to honor that notion, or until/unless people with guns come and forcibly take it from you under threat of violence.

The lack-of-guaranteed-taxability risk is a larger one, imo. But I know it's possible to build a kind of wrapping/middleman service on top of Bitcoin, to give one example, if a government wanted to, and legally require citizens to use it in order to ensure their income/sales are tracked and automatically taxed (with fees taken out automatically to act as tax inflows to that gov). It's physically possible, anyway, without requiring any physical change to the protocol or blockchain. Just the Ages Old solution governments everywhere have used: the threat of violent force for non-compliance.

Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN

#103
post #27

It just shows that many people are quick to be negative and for some reason unwilling to consider alternative possibilities. Remember that negative and critical viewpoints are normally perceived to be from the the more intelligent person. Unfortunately people who are more accepting of new and novel ideas can at first seem like the less intelligent of the group. (Probably because they are not quick to dismiss and put…

> many people many people ? Are you generalizing over a single post ?

It's a thing I have noticed in intelligent forums such as HN and also in real life.

Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN

#104

Can someone explain how the idea that every single transaction has to be stored in the ledger is scalable? Won't wider adoption mean that the ledger grows even quicker, to the point where it makes using btc harder and harder?

There are plans to implement Merkle tree pruning.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability#Storage

Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN

#105
post #90

and let's revisit this discussion 5 years from now. right now there is so much fluctutation within BC it might as well be tulips. maybe it will become a stable currency, maybe it won't.

Hate when people use the tulips comparison. The basic protocol of bitcoin that allows people to send value anywhere in the world and solves the double spend problem must have some value unto itself. I don't know it's worth $0.10, $100, or $1000000 per bitcoin to use the protocol but to compare it to a plant seems kinda ridiculous.

A plant has a value in itself. People consider tulips beautiful.

I don't know it's worth $0.10, $100, or $1000000...

Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN

#106
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value of a currency lies entirely in the perception of that value. I don't consider bitcoin different from a traditional currency, except that its rate of production is known in advance. It will keep having value because by now enough people think it does.

Bitcoin is different in that is the purest form of a fiat currency in the sense that it is backed by nothing and thus has no intrinsic value whatsoever. Traditional currencies, on the other hand, are at least fractionally backed by (usually) gold and government bonds which in itself are backed by a government's ability to tax its citizens. There is also a second problem in that BTC is deflationary by design. Deflatio…

>> Bitcoin is different in that is the purest form of a fiat currency in the sense that it is backed by nothing and thus has no intrinsic value whatsoever.

It's backed by the tremendous amount of electricity required to run the transaction processing network (ie. "mining"). Remember this is the world's largest distributed supercomputer.

BTC is a proxy for electricity, that's why mining equipment ended up at ASICs so quickly- in mining, less W = more $$. By a lot.

The USD is currently backed by absolutely nothing. There is no way we could print the $2000 trillion dollars[1] of derivatives now in existence. You couldn't cash out all of it or even too much of it.

The USD is "fake". And high finance is not ignorant to this fact, at all.

[1] Or more, no one actually knows. Goldman Sachs would have the best idea of this.

Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is different in that is the purest form of a fiat currency in the sense that it is backed by nothing and thus has no intrinsic value whatsoever. Traditional currencies, on the other hand, are at least fractionally backed by (usually) gold and government bonds which in itself are backed by a government's ability to tax its citizens. There is also a second problem in that BTC is deflationary by design. Deflatio…

The deflation risk can be solved, I think, if the core developers and core decision-makers (key movers and shakers in the community, like miners and vendors) all agree to a "split" event moment where every 1 previous BTC transmutes into say 1000 subsequent BTC (or whatever, picking numbers out of thin air). Making it easier to get BTC because old values which were too close to the smallest fraction floor now become s…

I don't think you understand the deflation argument.

Also Bitcoin can already be split into 10e8 subunits (Satoshis)

Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN

#109
post #90

and let's revisit this discussion 5 years from now. right now there is so much fluctutation within BC it might as well be tulips. maybe it will become a stable currency, maybe it won't.

Hate when people use the tulips comparison. The basic protocol of bitcoin that allows people to send value anywhere in the world and solves the double spend problem must have some value unto itself. I don't know it's worth $0.10, $100, or $1000000 per bitcoin to use the protocol but to compare it to a plant seems kinda ridiculous.

The easiest way to refute the tulip argument is simply point out Bitcoins total money stock is fixed at 21 million units, wheras you can plant new tulips at will. (The skill/time required to do this is irrelevant to the point).
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