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Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

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Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

#111

Post by mirimir »

lawlessone wrote: post #95
mirimir wrote: post #42

I've followed digital currencies for many years. As I recall, there were two libertarian threads that culminated in Bitcoin. One focused on evils of fiat currencies and central banking. The other focused on rights to private commerce, without state interference. And the potential to starve states, by making taxation impossible. Bitcoin handles both pretty well, in my experience. Except for the transaction-scaling pro…

Thing is, with a public ledger bitcoin is only partially private.

The ledger is public, to avoid double spending and other stuff. But addresses and wallets can be as unlinked and anonymous as you like.

Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

#112

Post by Laforet »

ringaroundthetx wrote: post #99
Laforet wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The price rising is validation for services on the periphery. Apart from brand recognition, which application is best conducted on the bitcoin ledger than every other alternative? Please don't say "Store of value". >Established services that can add a lot of utility for bitcoin. How would you go about doing it? Bitcoin was not designed to have side chains and tokens pegged all over it and there is a reason why the I…

Where would you like me to start? It was unclear whether you were criticism bitcoin as a criticism to all cryptocurrencies, or bitcoin by itself. Fortunately it looks like it is just bitcoin by itself. > which application is best conducted on the bitcoin ledger than every other alternative? Bitcoin has to compete on its own. I'm all for other cryptocurrencies unseating it. In a world where 90% drops are not uncommon…

>Fortunately it looks like it is just bitcoin by itself.

Yes, my comment is mainly about BTC, although its many flaws are hardly unique so the same criticism will inevitably apply elsewhere.

>When its network got full it lost its innovative edge as it took over two years to upgrade. In the meantime more fully featured competitors have focused on specific use cases.

I think we are actually in agreement here. Bitcoin was innovative and exciting for a while but has gradually become stale and boring without good leadership. And the competition is catching up fast.

>An upgraded bitcoin may have irreparably lost some of its network effect advantage, and thats okay. It will have robust scripting for the next wave of ICOs and other organizations, decreasing the point of most altcoins. The top 10 may have differentiating qualities and markets already. Play it by ear, it isn't controversial to notice.

Good point, but I don't see it happening anytime soon. For starters, malleability was identified as a problem as early as 2011 and it took six years to be fixed. Other proposed additions are either minor tweaks (Schnorr signature, MAST) or vaporware (Lightening network anyone?).

Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

#113

Post by pzs »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #90
dreit1 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a sense of victory because millions of people view Bitcoin as a good place to park their money over fiat currency. Unfortunately no one runs news stories on the growth of unique addresses in the bitcoin network

Do they now? I feel people still see Bitcoin mostly as a high-risk/high-reward no-barriers-to-entry alternative to the stock market.

That reminds me of what I read about how Warren Buffett thinks about gold [1]. His point is essentially that if you invest in gold, your return depends on the price swings until you get out, and nothing else. This is in contrast to investing in assets that actually produce something (e.g. pay dividend). I see bitcoin being very similar to gold in this respect.

[1] http://business.time.com/2012/02/27/warren-buffett-on-succes...

Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

#114

Post by marcosscriven »

Udik wrote: post #73
aedron wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So annoying to see triumphant declarations of victory of bitcoin, based solely on the price increasing. Speaking as a bitcoin owner and proponent, there is zero (actually negative) market uptake of bitcoin as a payment platform (which I happen to believe is bitcoin's primary use case). This is because no work has gone into scaling up transaction throughput, which has predictably suffered as a result of increased main…

> there is zero (actually negative) market uptake of bitcoin as a payment platform ... This is because no work has gone into scaling up transaction throughput No, or only partly so. The other, more fundamental reason why bitcoin will never be a payment platform, is that it doesn't behave as a currency, but as a commodity. The hard limit on the number of bitcoin is both the guarantee of its value and what makes it an…

I’ve seen forums posts from the early days where people have mentioned giving a tenth or so of a Bitcoin as a tip to thank them for an answer. Quite a tip now!

Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

#115

Post by marcosscriven »

speedplane wrote: post #93
TeMPOraL wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they now? I feel people still see Bitcoin mostly as a high-risk/high-reward no-barriers-to-entry alternative to the stock market.

I understand buying and selling BTC-backed securities that are backed by a trustworthy bank... but keeping your life savings on your laptop is just cray cray.

I read a story of people losing a huge amount to theft: https://medium.com/@CodyBrown/how-to-lose-8k-worth-of-bitcoi...

Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

#116

Post by marcosscriven »

chx wrote: post #109
ckastner wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because this supposed "law and accountability" led to things like the 2008 financial crisis. Didn't seem like there was much accountability then, so why should I trust that money supply? As someone working in the financial industry, the amount of regulations, internal audits, external audits, reporting requirements, etc. that financial institutions have to comply with is truly staggering. Sure, they 2008 financial…

Trust... someone typed in instead of copy pasting an Ethereum address, made a typo and lost five figures.

Addresses have a checksum for just that reason. It would be remarkably difficult to acccidentally mistype an address that had happened to have the correct checksum, and also be a valid address.

Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

#117

Post by thinkMOAR »

imaginenore wrote: post #81
thinkMOAR wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Does the price prove that bitcoin has not failed?" Does the price of a painting determine it is a good painting? Afaik not.

It proves it's a desired one. Which is a very important quality for a currency.

I learned different things in economics than. I learned about, scarcity, fungibility, divisibility, durability and transferability to be the main properties of a currency, not a desired factor of any case, afaik thats just a quality of humans, called greed.

Just because some people want something, doesn't make it a good currency. To stay in the same metaphor, I'd like to own the Nightwatch of rembrandt, just as many others do, still doesn't make it a currency or even gives it properties of 'currency'.

Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

#118

Post by Nursie »

jstanley wrote: post #110
Laforet wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The price rising is validation for services on the periphery. Apart from brand recognition, which application is best conducted on the bitcoin ledger than every other alternative? Please don't say "Store of value". >Established services that can add a lot of utility for bitcoin. How would you go about doing it? Bitcoin was not designed to have side chains and tokens pegged all over it and there is a reason why the I…

Bitcoin provides a way for 2 individuals, anywhere in the world, to exchange money without trusting any third party and without asking permission from any third party, and without their transaction being subject to censorship by any third party. That's huge.

For most people, not really.

I can send money to anyone I want to, I have no expectation of censorship or interference. The fees are low to zero depending on the exact method, and I don't have to jump through hoops to try to interact with a crypto-currency broker. I have protections, insurance and various forms of reversibility to fall back on if something screws up.

For me it's not huge, or even really relevant.

Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

#119

Post by Laforet »

VMG wrote: post #103
aedron wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So annoying to see triumphant declarations of victory of bitcoin, based solely on the price increasing. Speaking as a bitcoin owner and proponent, there is zero (actually negative) market uptake of bitcoin as a payment platform (which I happen to believe is bitcoin's primary use case). This is because no work has gone into scaling up transaction throughput, which has predictably suffered as a result of increased main…

> [..] there is no 'payment layer' on top of it, only pie-in-the-sky designs. That is completely false. Development of Lightning Network and other solutions by multiple teams has been steady and robust. To cite a few working on LN: * https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning * https://github.com/acquia/lightning * https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd

> * https://github.com/acquia/lightning

This project is a web development tool and has nothing to do with crypto.

Back to your comments on the state of LN development, I would not call it robust when the current implementation requires every client to monitor the blockchain 24/7 just in case a node attempts to cheat the system, and there is a good chance the cheater will succeed when the settlement layer becomes congested. For now they are very much pie in the sky.

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