111–120 of 225 posts
Or rather "The Disaster That Is Bitcoin Services Around Bitcoin". I'm wondering if there would be the same kind of article that dollars is very bad, because bank wants some money for wireing them e.g. to Europe, and the exchange rate between dollar and euro could change overnight.
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> It seems the actual fiat currency part worked fine. I don't think Bitcoin is made at will out of thin air like flat currency routinely is. You can still argue that this is not a problem with flat currency itself, but the problem is, unlike Bitcoin, the laws regarding printing and production of flat currency are not governed by hard-to-break math.
But it's not really based on math. A majority of miners could decide, say after the next halvening that future block rewards should be held as is. Sure, it would split the network, but a majority of miners may decide it's in their economic interest to do so.
There's nothing they can do that gets rid of your bitcoin though. That's the "math" point. As long as they're on the main chain the rules (expressible as math) prevent arbitrary creation or destruction of coins.
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Bitcoin is made at will out of thin air. It's just an arbitrary amount created every day. The creation rate was just picked by whoever created it. I think it can actually be changed by concensus. I see no reason why an arbitrary rate is better than a rate chosen to minimize inflation and deflation. Bitcoin basically is a fiat currency, except no government forces people to use it.
The irony being if something like Fusion power happened bitcoin hyperinflation would be guaranteed.
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> It seems the actual fiat currency part worked fine. I don't think Bitcoin is made at will out of thin air like flat currency routinely is. You can still argue that this is not a problem with flat currency itself, but the problem is, unlike Bitcoin, the laws regarding printing and production of flat currency are not governed by hard-to-break math.
Unfortunately for Bitcoin all of the issues 99% people have with fiat currency today have literally nothing to do with how money is created. Yes, it's a difficult problem to solve. No, Bitcoin has not solved it. Piggybacking on the electrical grid to turn "fairness" into "how much electricity you can afford"... how is that fair?
$236 is small change compared to how much bitcoin I've personally lost in the various hacks - MtGox and others. Even so, I still think bitcoin is a brilliant tech and valuable experiment. It is wrong to think of bitcoin as a direct competitor to fiat. Just like mp3 / bittorent did not destroy the music / movie industry, bitcoin isn't going to replace fiat currency. Not now and not in it's current form. But it's going…
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Unfortunately for Bitcoin all of the issues 99% people have with fiat currency today have literally nothing to do with how money is created. Yes, it's a difficult problem to solve. No, Bitcoin has not solved it. Piggybacking on the electrical grid to turn "fairness" into "how much electricity you can afford"... how is that fair?
I haven't said it's "fair", only that there's a proven algorithm behind it, which I'll trust more than the goodness of human nature alone.
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> It seems the actual fiat currency part worked fine. I don't think Bitcoin is made at will out of thin air like flat currency routinely is. You can still argue that this is not a problem with flat currency itself, but the problem is, unlike Bitcoin, the laws regarding printing and production of flat currency are not governed by hard-to-break math.
Bitcoin is made at will out of thin air. It's just an arbitrary amount created every day. The creation rate was just picked by whoever created it. I think it can actually be changed by concensus. I see no reason why an arbitrary rate is better than a rate chosen to minimize inflation and deflation. Bitcoin basically is a fiat currency, except no government forces people to use it.
It's not about the rate, but about the EXACT rules being agreed upon up front by the MAJORITY of the network and actually enforced by a proven algorithm, rather than people's conscience alone.
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I find it amusing that you consider the internet "on your own" like there isn't a gigantic investment being made into that infrastructure that even enables bitcoin in the first place. Do people who are in to Bitcoin think intermediaries solely exist to extract value from transactions? There's actually a service being provided.
The argument here is that the protocol itself is independent and can run on the internet like bittorrent, IRC, SMTP, XMPP etc. This is not about the physical laws and resources governing the internet.
I used TransferWise last time I had to move some money internationally, and had a good experience. Significantly faster and cheaper than wiring the money.