201–210 of 1001 posts
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Already wealthy? I don't think you know the scene well. HFT probably pulled more physics and math grads out of poverty than any other field.
It's also pulled those grads away from more typical jobs they'd have building useful things and actually producing new real-world value.
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The mob always wins in the end, but I never understood why many on HN have been so cynical about Bitcoin. At least Satoshi tried, whoever they were. They gave a gift to the world, but it sadly got co-opted and taken over first by small-time grifters and now by the big boys at Wall Street. In hindsight it was probably bound to happen, because money buys influence and a casual decentralized group of coders can never wi…
>... but I never understood what many on HN have been so cynical about Bitcoin. Eh, I think you actually might! Hell, you said it yourself - the mob always wins in the end. It doesn't matter what Satoshi made, the mob took it and made it into something else. It's what Bitcoin turned into that HN is collectively cynical about.
Ignoring that this idea was mocked by many from the start for reasons we can only speculate about, it seems there's a lot of confusion about what Bitcoin currently is as well. Mocking the idea that poor people in Congo will be saved by Bitcoin - sure. Making fun of laser-eyed Bitcoin maxis telling you we'll all totally use Bitcoin for payments (have you heard of the Lightening Network bruh?) - of course, I joke about them too.
But what you have is the first time in the history of the planet that there is a public ledger that can be used by anyone, transparently and permissionlessly, to store and transfer value. It's not in the hand of any bank or government. Nobody can freeze your account because you're fully in control. You can run your own node to push transactions if you wish to. It can absolutely not be falsified, unlike cash or book money. This is still extremely valuable. Especially when you add programmability, which Bitcoin only has in a rudimentary form, but other "smart contract" platforms already do much better. Because now you can automate transactions and those transactions don't necessarily have to be about money.
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What about Lightning Network?
That's off chain and should be nearly free
High BTC fees impede the Lightning Network from being a true scaling solution, an obvious fact that has been dismissed for many years by adherents of absurdly small block sizes.
Satoshi's dream of a decentralised ledger finally reaches its ultimate form of a centralised list maintained by the DTC. Rejoice!
Cryptocurrency still works the same as it ever did. I would be more concerned that the average bitcoin transactions costs over $11 dollars (down from over $37 USD a month ago) https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees...
Having read many of these negative comments, I think part of this sentiment boils down to the commenter seeing no point to Bitcoin. Just this thread has examples. It must be more than a little annoying to feel very strongly that Bitcoin is pointless, but to also notice that it's still here. Year after year.
If that shoe were on my foot, in addition to being annoyed I'd be curious about what I was missing.
Bitcoin doesn't have to do something useful for everyone to survive. It doesn't have to "replace fiat." It doesn't have to be a payment system. It doesn't have to "go to the moon." It doesn't even need an ETF. Bitcoin just needs to fill needs (or wants) not met by anything else. They don't even have to be your needs or wants.
Unlike every other attempt at electronic cash that came before it, Bitcoin also doesn't need the approval of any person, police force, legislative body, military, or government. I'd challenge people who hold negative views on Bitcoin to name some other systems for which this holds true.
I think that's the point that a lot of hostile commenters might be missing.
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The Lightning Network isn’t working as intended and the devs have basically admitted it’s never going to though. I don’t think blockchain as it is built for the btc network is as scalable as you think it can be.
I offered the Lightning Network as a single example. I don't agree with you, but it's largely irrelevant at this stage. The fact is that Bitcoin is very likely to absorb a vast percentage of the worlds value simply as it is. Once this has happened its value will stabilise and it will become useful as a unit of account/day-to-day currency. By this point, there will be far more motivation to focus on developing solutio…
You present this as a fact, but the actual valuation of Bitcoin doesn't seem to support this claim. John McAfee bet (and proverbially lost) his testicles on broad estimations of Bitcoin's continued growth. Without extraordinary evidence, you can't make claims of extraordinary provenience.
> there will be far more motivation to focus on developing solutions (such as Lightning) to allow smaller and faster transactions.
If you need an L2 transaction layer to solve an issue inherent to an L1 chain, you're kinda just admitting that the base layer is flawed. Why use Bitcoin at all if we need mediators to settle regular transactions?
The "we'll fix it later" mentality works for shitty altcoins that have nothing to lose by reinventing themselves, but I'm not convinced Bitcoin can change. I was mining Bitcoin about a decade ago now, hearing people say "Lightning will work soon" or "a good interchain bridge will exist eventually" in 2024 leaves me convinced nothing has changed. It's a race between the economics and the technology to see which becomes outdated first.
The strong anti-Bitcoin sentiment on HN is still amusing. It goes way back - 13 years or more. Having read many of these negative comments, I think part of this sentiment boils down to the commenter seeing no point to Bitcoin. Just this thread has examples. It must be more than a little annoying to feel very strongly that Bitcoin is pointless, but to also notice that it's still here. Year after year. If that shoe wer…
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While I agree with the sentiment, please remember that actually buying BTC directly and doing self-custody is still an option.
So much more hassle though. Nobody's going to bother with that now - what's the point?
The strong anti-Bitcoin sentiment on HN is still amusing. It goes way back - 13 years or more. Having read many of these negative comments, I think part of this sentiment boils down to the commenter seeing no point to Bitcoin. Just this thread has examples. It must be more than a little annoying to feel very strongly that Bitcoin is pointless, but to also notice that it's still here. Year after year. If that shoe wer…
What needs and wants is it fulfilling for you?
I swear I saw some super highly upvoted comments that read as normal + level-headed in r/CryptoCurrnecy that was like "if it goes from $45k -> $100k this year it isn't even that much"
Do you ever hear Warren Buffet saying "122% yearly returns are meh"?
The strong anti-Bitcoin sentiment on HN is still amusing. It goes way back - 13 years or more. Having read many of these negative comments, I think part of this sentiment boils down to the commenter seeing no point to Bitcoin. Just this thread has examples. It must be more than a little annoying to feel very strongly that Bitcoin is pointless, but to also notice that it's still here. Year after year. If that shoe wer…
Most people who are observant are well aware that there’s deep and enduring demand for ways to gamble and speculate.
It’s really easy to recognize Bitcoin filling that role like the neighborhood numbers game, pachinko, online poker, and tulip investing all have at various times in history.
We just don’t like it.