The greatest success of Bitcoin is that no one has yet succeeded in turning it into a rent-seeking platform.
Cryptocurrency Startup School
121–130 of 160 posts
Re: Cryptocurrency Startup School
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
None of them. There is no such thing as a 'fake' bitcoin transaction. What you are thinking of is fake trading volume on exchanges. Those are very different things.
It's baffling to me seeing the progression of anti-blockchain people. They keep insisting that it's all a joke, and yet every single day the level of adoption keeps on increasing. I feel like I'm watching the internet be born again.
> They keep insisting that it's all a joke, and yet every single day the level of adoption keeps on increasing.
Do you have a citation for that claim? The people hoping to get rich quick in the space are active but there's almost no usage by the general populace.
> I feel like I'm watching the internet be born again.
The early internet had huge barriers to adoption (computers were expensive, network connections were expensive and glacially slow), but each phase of expansion had immediate popular uses. As an example, the web was ~1990, NCSA Mosaic came out in 1993 (Netscape was 1994) and by 1995 it was a household term with rapidly growing personal, business, and government usage for a wide range of tasks. In the earlier era, things were more limited due to connectivity issues but there were still substantial numbers of people using email, usenet, FTP, etc.
In contrast, Bitcoin has been out for 11 years, didn't have any of the barriers to adoption like the early internet, but if it disappeared tomorrow almost nobody outside of the industry would have any interruption in their lives.
Re: Cryptocurrency Startup School
#123Cryptocurrency space is focusing on the wrong problems. Bitcoin original goal is to create a digital currency that people can use. We're not even close to achieve that goal. But the space is sidetracked into ugly technical wars, elaborate and complicated financial engineering. There are some fundamental questions that have not been answered. If you are starting, you should look at these. - How do we make Bitcoin/cryp…
I d say most of the hurdles are regulatory. Bitcoin has become digital gold - a place to store large amounts as a hedge and nothing more. Cryptocurrency will not take the place of visa payments because there s no insurance, its slow etc. All the uses where cryptocurrency would shine and visa cannot do (e.g. quick anonymous tips for your comment) are illegal. So we re stuck until either the regulatory framework or nat…
Not sure if the idea that Bitcoin acts as an hedge has much weight considering it’s never been tested in a first world economic downturn; arguably, it has worked in third world countries which face high inflation and have a lack of public confidence in monetary policy. But where is the majority of Bitcoin held, in the former or latter?
Re: Cryptocurrency Startup School
#124Cryptocurrency space is focusing on the wrong problems. Bitcoin original goal is to create a digital currency that people can use. We're not even close to achieve that goal. But the space is sidetracked into ugly technical wars, elaborate and complicated financial engineering. There are some fundamental questions that have not been answered. If you are starting, you should look at these. - How do we make Bitcoin/cryp…
> create a digital currency that people can use. I 100% agree. I love the core ideas, but it's not really useable yet beyond a few (important) use cases. I think the problem is trust. I first got in Bitcoin at $6 and Ethereum at $10. I got out way too early to retire (hence why I bought the domain sellnothing.com, to remind myself of an important lesson), but I got out because I realized the system was too complex an…
Wtf are you talking about? Digital currencies don't "work" because they are volatile not because they lack a Tree Notation strategy. They have become an speculative investment/gambling rather than a method of payment.
Re: Cryptocurrency Startup School
#125Cryptocurrency space is focusing on the wrong problems. Bitcoin original goal is to create a digital currency that people can use. We're not even close to achieve that goal. But the space is sidetracked into ugly technical wars, elaborate and complicated financial engineering. There are some fundamental questions that have not been answered. If you are starting, you should look at these. - How do we make Bitcoin/cryp…
> Bitcoin original goal is to create a digital currency that people can use. We're not even close to achieve that goal.
I disagree. Cryptocurrency is de facto being used as a currency quite successfully by lots of people. Sure, there are technical hurdles that prevent people who don't really have any need for a decentralized currency from using it. But none of those hurdles are so challenging that people can't use it if they really need it. Plenty of people have used cryptocurrency to move money across borders, make purchases that are illegal under oppressive regimes, etc., and not all of those were technical users. There aren't technical hurdles so high that someone who wants to buy drugs online can't do it with enough effort, for example.
Hacker News types will point to the failure of cryptocurrency to emerge as a competitor to traditional currencies within the regulated market, but that's precisely what you'd expect: cryptocurrencies hamper regulation, so of course there will be resistance from the regulated market. But don't mistake that for failure: cryptocurrencies have created whole markets and flows of value effectively didn't exist before.
To be clear, here's what I'm NOT saying:
1. I'm not saying there isn't room for improvement in the user experience. There is.
2. I'm also not saying that the effects of cryptocurrency are necessarily positive. That remains to be seen.
Re: Cryptocurrency Startup School
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
I d say most of the hurdles are regulatory. Bitcoin has become digital gold - a place to store large amounts as a hedge and nothing more. Cryptocurrency will not take the place of visa payments because there s no insurance, its slow etc. All the uses where cryptocurrency would shine and visa cannot do (e.g. quick anonymous tips for your comment) are illegal. So we re stuck until either the regulatory framework or nat…
Not sure if the idea that Bitcoin acts as an hedge has much weight considering it’s never been tested in a first world economic downturn; arguably, it has worked in third world countries which face high inflation and have a lack of public confidence in monetary policy. But where is the majority of Bitcoin held, in the former or latter?
i d assume a lot of chinese do it - no idea really, but it's a form of easily accessible gold
Re: Cryptocurrency Startup School
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
> create a digital currency that people can use. I 100% agree. I love the core ideas, but it's not really useable yet beyond a few (important) use cases. I think the problem is trust. I first got in Bitcoin at $6 and Ethereum at $10. I got out way too early to retire (hence why I bought the domain sellnothing.com, to remind myself of an important lesson), but I got out because I realized the system was too complex an…
Wtf are you talking about? Digital currencies don't "work" because they are volatile not because they lack a Tree Notation strategy. They have become an speculative investment/gambling rather than a method of payment.
I agree that volatility is a problem but I think it's a symptom of the root cause. I think digital currencies do work now for a few use cases (cross border transfer, for example), but they don't work mainstream because you can't trust them at the core.
It's not a very understandable system, and that's a benefit to certain powerful players in the field, to the detriment of everyone else. Most people now holding bitcoin are speculators or fools. A few people/groups with significant resources have the ability to truly understand what's going on, and unless you are one of those folks you are just along for the ride.
With Tree Notation you could start moving toward a far simpler system with no unnecessary complexity, where it would be much harder to maintain an information advantage over the average user. The chain of transactions itself would be very easy to audit, but long term so would the node code, etc. All cryptocurrencies currently use overly complex languages (mostly BNFs) both for their nodes and their blockchains. I think Tree Notation will eat those (http://longbets.org/793/) and someone(s) who apply it early to the crypto world will win a lot of users.
Re: Cryptocurrency Startup School
#128Cryptocurrency space is focusing on the wrong problems. Bitcoin original goal is to create a digital currency that people can use. We're not even close to achieve that goal. But the space is sidetracked into ugly technical wars, elaborate and complicated financial engineering. There are some fundamental questions that have not been answered. If you are starting, you should look at these. - How do we make Bitcoin/cryp…
I d say most of the hurdles are regulatory. Bitcoin has become digital gold - a place to store large amounts as a hedge and nothing more. Cryptocurrency will not take the place of visa payments because there s no insurance, its slow etc. All the uses where cryptocurrency would shine and visa cannot do (e.g. quick anonymous tips for your comment) are illegal. So we re stuck until either the regulatory framework or nat…
> Pay people with bitcoin.
I don't get paid in bitcoin. How do I pay people with bitcoin? :)
I think regulation concern is overrated in crypto, at least, with Bitcoin. Crypto complaint about regulation is mainly rooted in libertarian politics. If you are a cryptocurrency and you want to interface with fiat currencies, you need to comply with fiat regulation. KYC is painful but it is necessary. It even helps reduce fraud.
You can't throw your crypto no regulation gauntlet at fiat and demand them to comply to your game. It's crypto wanting to play the fiat game, not the other way around. Currently, there are many ways to on-ramp from fiat to crypto in the US. There's no government interference. If Bitcoin is an asset, Store of Value, you need to be taxed as asset. You can't do both currency and asset thing.
Re: Cryptocurrency Startup School
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
I d say most of the hurdles are regulatory. Bitcoin has become digital gold - a place to store large amounts as a hedge and nothing more. Cryptocurrency will not take the place of visa payments because there s no insurance, its slow etc. All the uses where cryptocurrency would shine and visa cannot do (e.g. quick anonymous tips for your comment) are illegal. So we re stuck until either the regulatory framework or nat…
> Pay people with bitcoin. I don't get paid in bitcoin. How do I pay people with bitcoin? :) I think regulation concern is overrated in crypto, at least, with Bitcoin. Crypto complaint about regulation is mainly rooted in libertarian politics. If you are a cryptocurrency and you want to interface with fiat currencies, you need to comply with fiat regulation. KYC is painful but it is necessary. It even helps reduce fr…
> your crypto no regulation gauntlet at fiat and demand them to comply to your game
you can pay a homeless person with cash. you can pay a street performer with cash. you can gift cash. it's all anonymous no fuss. that's what crypto is, digital cash, not a digital credit card
Re: Cryptocurrency Startup School
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sadly it’s the opposite of a joke. 1 bitcoin transaction is 607kWh (or 288kgCO2 and 85g of ewaste). And the more efficient technology gets the less efficient bitcoin gets. Patently absurd. 95% of volume is fraudulent, and decentralized and trustless means that’s an intentional, irrevocable part of the system. Being able to circumvent international sanctions and pay terrorists is a feature. North Korea has been accumu…
You are right that we will pay miners more in the future, that sounds like an opportunity not a problem.
You’re not understanding. The miners have to take that much money out of circulation (exchange BTC block rewards to dollars) to pay for their electric bills, which means that much new money has to come in to make up for it for the price to remain stable. It’s negative sum. And as the price rises so does the negative coefficient.