151–160 of 1001 posts
Time is money. Bitcoin is wasted time. And wasted money. And wasted energy.
Furthermore, there are not "blockchains," there is one blockchain, and then there are a thousand or more scams trying ride Bitcoin's shoulders. They are entirely pointless systems that are not made to solve anything, they don't solve anything, and they were not made by mathematicians or cryptographers.
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Here me out. What if it was the only way to defund the US military? Would you be interested then? Why do we waste so much energy building killing machines? Why is there not a daily hackernews thread complaining about the energy consumption of the US military? Because it’s a necessary to ensure you can buy and sell things when you want to.
Anything Bitcoin can do, we can do now with proof-of-stake currencies at a tiny fraction of the energy consumption.
At this point Bitcoin and Eth have about a trillion USD of built up burned work. Is that enough to prime the pump for a POS-based world economy? I dunno. Probably?
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Now do the gold mining industry, and then how USD is backed by armies. And then you can research Lightning Network on top of Bitcoin and how it can process an unlimited number of transactions.
This is just whataboutism. Gold isn't used as a currency. Seems a stretch to claim the armies exist solely for the USD. And until the Lightning Network is actually implemented it will remain theoretical.
This is the article that made things finally click with me. Thinking about the pre-WWI gold standard and the issues that existed there and the improvements that Bitcoin brings around time, consensus, etc. The baseless negative comments with no interaction with the article content confirms for me that Bitcoin is on to something. Sour grapes syndrome is a result of pride, I think.
> Sour grapes syndrome is a result of pride, I think. Or maybe it comes from people who have read an Econo101 textbook and who have spent a lot of time trying to explain a crowd of Bitcoin enthusiasts why their reasoning is wrong but no one has been listening to them so far so they are bored. Back in the time I used to spend my days on a forum about Economics. Every other week there was a random guy who signed up jus…
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If that was the argument, I would ask in response: if it could do that, why would the combined vested interests of the US military-industrial lot allow Bitcoin to succeed ? It’s not beyond the reach of governments to ban unwanted trade, and even though bans are not magic, even a half-arsed enforcement of such a ban is enough to prevent a currency becoming endemic.
> It’s not beyond the reach of governments to ban unwanted trade Yeah, right, it worked so well for alcohol... It DOES (/s) work so well for drugs in the US right now... And hey imagine whether it's easier or harder to ban something that doesn't take any physical space in your suitcase and can be transacted with only internet connection.
"""and even though bans are not magic, even a half-arsed enforcement of such a ban is enough to prevent a currency becoming endemic."""
Bitcoin is only popular because tech workers get paid a lot and have the ability to speculate, we live in a world of massive asset bubbles created by government fiscal policies and Bitcoin is excellent for buying drugs on-line. Most people want security in their assets, which is why a majority of folks read articles about bitcoin but never touch one. All of these articles are great examples of creative writing. I do…
Do we? Or have we lived in a world where asset prices were suppressed due to artificial intervention by central banks.
Interest rate setting is a market intervention. If left to its own devices the market rate would be driven down towards zero.
Why are we still talking about bitcoin and first gen blockchain tech. Yes it's old, yes it's slow, yes it wastes resources. It is legacy software after all. PoS solves the problem of mining and wasted energy. Cardano's Ouroboros is a provable and secure Proof-of-Stake blockchain protocol. https://docs.cardano.org/en/latest/explore-cardano/relevant-...
Because it doesn't seem to be going away faster than the newer generations. There is a real chance that if cryptocurrency ends up being a thing forever that BTC is the winner. And that is an environmental disaster until we get to 100% clean energy worldwide.
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> using 0.1% of the entire world's energy in order to do 3 transactions per second is beyond ludicrous In comparison to what? What do we get in return? Many consider the benefits to be worth it.
> What do we get in return? Fantastic question. I've been waiting 10 years for a convincing answer; still waiting.
Can you please just answer this - do you suppose they all halt what they are doing and wait for an undeterminate amount of time for you to also get it, before they can go on with their businesses and lives?
Why are we still talking about bitcoin and first gen blockchain tech. Yes it's old, yes it's slow, yes it wastes resources. It is legacy software after all. PoS solves the problem of mining and wasted energy. Cardano's Ouroboros is a provable and secure Proof-of-Stake blockchain protocol. https://docs.cardano.org/en/latest/explore-cardano/relevant-...
I'm not saying this is you, but many people on HN will cry out "Use Boring Tech!" while also not understanding why Bitcoin is king. Bitcoin is old, secure, proven, and most importantly _simple_. Of course what you sacrifice with Proof of Stake is sovereignty. A random person cannot participate in the network unless they have X amount of existing resources. So that's the trade-off as I understand it. Depends on where…
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> Sour grapes syndrome is a result of pride, I think. Or maybe it comes from people who have read an Econo101 textbook and who have spent a lot of time trying to explain a crowd of Bitcoin enthusiasts why their reasoning is wrong but no one has been listening to them so far so they are bored. Back in the time I used to spend my days on a forum about Economics. Every other week there was a random guy who signed up jus…
Would you care to share your Econo101 knowledge? I'm not an economist, but nothing has convinced me yet that bitcoin is not the best form of money.
Are those things that can change over time? Certainly - but it hasn't happened yet.