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Bitcoin still makes no sense

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Re: Bitcoin still makes no sense

#101

Post by leesalminen »

dmitriid wrote: post #75
leesalminen wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oh, right. Stocks, property, securities, bonds, investments, diversified portfolios. As the parent poster mentioned, the US’ monetary policy is awful and many believe is on the brink of major problems. China’s financial reporting is untrustworthy- you never know what you’re getting investing there. EU is in the middle of brexit, financial crisis in member nations. So, yeah, some new alternative financial instrument…

> As the parent poster mentioned, the US’ monetary policy is awful and many believe is on the brink of major problems. Ah yes, "the brink of major problems". That's the undying adage of USSR and later Russian news programs. "Dollar is on the brink of collapse". > So, yeah, some new alternative financial instrument seems attractive to me. How can one forget, that these crises are unique, are happening for the first ti…

I don’t think the USSR existed during a global pandemic. In fact, I would posit that the globalized nature of our economy adds a new twist to any pandemic that has come before. I don’t think the absoluteness of your position is warranted.

As you mentioned in another reply- diversification of ones’ portfolio is important. I, and most people, would never put all their money into BTC or crypto in general. That would clearly be a bad decision. But, why _shouldn’t_ I put <10% of my portfolio in a new asset class that has growth potential? Many people put 10% of their portfolio into all kinds of crazy things.

Re: Bitcoin still makes no sense

#102

Post by mumblemumble »

scoopertrooper wrote: post #16
ridaj wrote: post #3

It makes sense to me about as much as the trade in ancient coins, stamps, and other collectibles. These are reasonable asset classes if you like gambling, with a somewhat fixed supply, not a lot of industrial applications, and wild price fluctuations based entirely on subjective appreciation. Bitcoin is more liquid but otherwise the price dynamic looks about the same...

I guess the key difference is that less startups have bilked investors by peddling fantastical dreams of post-fiat ancient coin based economies.

I guess it depends on how you define "startup." If it specifically means VC backed tech firms, sure, almost tautologically so. If not, well, I've been aware of dodgy ads for precious metals and coins and suchlike in the backs of magazines for as long as I've known how to read.

Re: Bitcoin still makes no sense

#103

Post by mandragon »

alacombe wrote: post #90
mandragon wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A QC to implement shor's algo at a practical level would need millions of non-ec'ed qubits. At least publicly, we are likely quite far from any such advance.

Integer factorization (ie. Shor's algorithm) would only be useful to break RSA, not Elliptic Curve cryptography...

ECC can be theoretically broken with Shor's algorithm:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliptic-curve_cryptography#...

Re: Bitcoin still makes no sense

#104

Post by scoopertrooper »

domatic1 wrote: post #32

I'm still surprised that bitcoin is hated here, such a great technology. It's a decentralised currency, and it's working really well. A lot of big institutions are taking it seriously now. Does paper cash printed by government make more sense?

One of the big selling points of Bitcoin was it was supposed to enable free and fast transactions. As it turns out, the average transaction clearing time is 200 minutes and transaction fee is about $11. Now, compare that to Australia's New Payments Platform, which enable instant free transfers of fiat.

https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-transaction-fees-hashrate

https://www.blockchain.com/charts/avg-confirmation-time

Re: Bitcoin still makes no sense

#105

Post by claydavisss »

prohobo wrote: post #48

This seems more like it's questioning cryptocurrency itself, and putting it at odds with fiat currencies and states. As for states, they're rolling out their own cryptos. The Chinese have CryptoYuan, the EU central bank is releasing a currency likely by late 2021, and the Federal Reserve is also planning to create a new currency. That's how they beat Bitcoin. Fiat currency is likely going to be slowly phased out as c…

There is zero chance of world governments moving to a currency, digital, paper, whatever, that they cannot produce upon demand. Zero chance.

Governments are proposing digital currencies, not necessarily crypto currencues. All of these digital currencies will still be managed by a Central Bank. Central Banks are literally the power base of world governments, there is zero chance they will relinquish that power without a world war or violent global revolution.

Almost everyone in Silicon Valley has been enriched by the system of Central Bank currency manipulation, so hopefully you're not expecting these same people to cheerlead something akin to a geek-fantasy gold standard.

Re: Bitcoin still makes no sense

#106

Post by prohobo »

echelon wrote: post #83
prohobo wrote: post #48

This seems more like it's questioning cryptocurrency itself, and putting it at odds with fiat currencies and states. As for states, they're rolling out their own cryptos. The Chinese have CryptoYuan, the EU central bank is releasing a currency likely by late 2021, and the Federal Reserve is also planning to create a new currency. That's how they beat Bitcoin. Fiat currency is likely going to be slowly phased out as c…

Which state will win? Will USD fall to CryptoYuan, or will the US solution have advantage? Where can you follow design of these initiatives? Could a state actor DDoS another state's crypto, or will these just be centralized systems with just the crypto moniker? Will Libra make it?

Considering China has bought up a majority of gold in the past decade, and they're the global leader in production, I'd say CryptoYuan will have the best chance of winning out.

I assume they're keeping their designs under wraps for now, but I haven't really taken a deep look. There is some info available though:

* The Chinese Central Bank has filed over 80 patents relating to CryptoYuan, which can be checked out - https://digitalchamber.org/pboc-patent-repository/

* The European Central Bank released a report in October - https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/Report_on_a_digital_...

* The Federal Reserve is apparently still just researching - https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/cent...

DDoSing another state's crypto would probably be considered an overt act of war, so I don't know how often that could happen.

I have no idea what Libra is to be honest.

Re: Bitcoin still makes no sense

#107

Post by throw1234651234 »

dralley wrote: post #56
throw1234651234 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"with little positive effects to show for it" It's an efficient store of value. Here is a dilemma - you have 10 million dollars. You need somewhere to park your money. Do you follow the Chinese businessman pattern and buy real estate in Toronto? That seems complicated - picking a property, being subject to the real estate market, etc. Often these houses sit empty, since you are on the topic of wasted resources. Do yo…

A single bitcoin transaction (that is, literally one) uses as much electricity as a house consumes in several weeks. The entire system uses roughly the same amount of electricity as the country of Ireland, or Denmark. For ~300k transactions per day. No, the "huge energy waste" is so vast as to be nearly inconceivable. It cannot reasonably be compared to anything else. Even shipping literal gold around by helicopter m…

I had to source check you on that. To be honest, I never really looked into it and thought the numbers were sensationalized:

"Bitcoin uses as much energy as the whole of Switzerland, a new online tool from the University of Cambridge shows." https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-48853230

Anyway, the BTC-enthusiast argument to that is "Well, if BTC replace banks, imagine how much money that would save."

That argument holds some ground - think of all the armored cars, shipping containers, and facilities that serve to move and store cash and gold, as well as all the labor involved in maintaining the system.

Of course, BTC is not going to replace cash/gold fully in the near future, if ever, and the cost is absurd. Nor is there a solution to this, as transaction demand will just continue driving up price.

The environmental argument is one that I concede.

Re: Bitcoin still makes no sense

#108

Post by ccortes »

dmitriid wrote: post #91
ccortes wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is pretty useful for cross-border payments

It's pretty useful for exactly one case of cross-border payments: into countries that are under international sanctions. For every other country literally anything else is more useful and convenient.

I can tell you have never experienced this problem before but it might surprise you to know that many counties not under international sanctions have big issues to send money to other countries

Re: Bitcoin still makes no sense

#109

Post by throw1234651234 »

dang wrote: post #86
throw1234651234 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dimas, I already clearly listed the problems with those investments, in case you didn't understand, I will repeat: Stocks - all time high during COVID-19, propped up by fed printing money. Very risk invesment atm. Property - buying real estate of any form is a very complicated process, where you get burned if you don't understand the market. Securities - same thing as stocks - unless you are trading options, features…

Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Genuinely not my intent. This topic is bound to be controversial, but it also seems to be worth discussing for the people who are willing to take a little heat for their opinions.

Re: Bitcoin still makes no sense

#110

Post by bawolff »

So to actually comment on the article instead of just ranting how bitcoin is either amazing or terrible:

> I’m still trying to piece together what exactly how much control governments really lose under Bitcoin

Can't you just compare it to the gold standard? Seems like we have a lot of history we could look at where gov could not print money how it pleased.

> The enforcement of debt and the ability to track money seem, to me, like some of its most important properties. If I can’t tell how much Bitcoin someone has, how can they be made financially responsible in court?

Seems fairly easy to me - you ask them how much money they have, they tell you. If they lie, you throw them in jail. Its really no different than how we handle people who keep there money in the form of gold bars under the bed, or in offshore bank accounts. Sure you can sometimes get away with shinanigans, but its not a new problem.

> I’m also interested in what a world with a fixed amount of currency really looks like. I would imagine “inflating away” debtors obligations through fiat would not really be on the table.

It would look like the gold standard. inflating away debt with fiat in a major way is pretty uncommon anyway and usually ends badly (Germany tried that and we ended up with WWII!)

> 65% hashrate by china, 51%attack, etc

It should be noted that a 51% attack is generally something noticeable. Its not a secret attack. So that reduces risk somewhat. Also i thought 51% attacks were actually closer to only needing 33%.

> Energy, environment

Yeah, i agree with author on these points. Ethereum is doing some interesting stuff here.

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