Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bitcoin is a disaster

metzdowd.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 992 posts

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#221

Post by oblio »

smabie wrote: post #166
oblio wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gold is good for nothing useful imo, but is used in jewlery and other because it has value (not the other way around, as in gold has value because people make jewelry with it). You do know that gold has super low reactivity and it's a very good conductor, right? :-)

The vast majority of mined gold in existence is not used for industrial purposes.

But industrial use is big (see the link from the other poster, 37% in the US), and growing. Gold is a very useful material and not only for its shininess.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#222

Post by ojhughes »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #130
addicted wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one treats Bitcoin as a currency. It’s treated as an investment vehicle. And the reason behind that is obvious. Something whose value may double in a month or whose value may halve within weeks is a terrible currency. If I expect it’s value to increase then I would be a fool to spend it. If I expect it’s value to drop I would be a fool to accept it. Cryptocurrencies are anything but currencies.

I use Bitcoin where ever possible, so your opening claim is wrong. I've been banned from Paypal. I've run into many verification issues over the last decade with banks because I have no proof of residency once my driver's license expired. Like physical cash, it doesn't need to be superior in all ways to be useful at all.

You also need a valid ID verification to buy BTC from the main platforms now

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#223

Post by nathias »

Yes the public nature of transactions is a feature. Yes the scarcity is a feature (remember this in 5 years when hyperinflation hits you). And the point of making money fair isn't to reinvent its features its to make them transparent and equal to all without catering to the special parasitic aspects of our societies.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#224

Post by gruez »

Trasmatta wrote: post #180
hombre_fatal wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Bitcoin where ever possible, so your opening claim is wrong. I've been banned from Paypal. I've run into many verification issues over the last decade with banks because I have no proof of residency once my driver's license expired. Like physical cash, it doesn't need to be superior in all ways to be useful at all.

Do you live in the US? If so, how do you deal with the tax implications of buying lots of things with crypto? It's my understanding that each of those is considered a taxable event that you have to report on your tax return.

>It's my understanding that each of those is considered a taxable event that you have to report on your tax return.

Isn't that trivial to do from a reporting point of view? Just export your wallet history and do a lookup on that day's price.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#225

Post by louwrentius »

Barrin92 wrote: post #3

>The scarcity of block chain space has led people to re-invent every last feature of the banks they thought they were going to be escaping. This is a pretty funny point because every time I go on twitter and see people talk about crypto, what they're essentially having is a discussion about public policy, and often they seem to try to reinvent institutions that already exist without even knowing it. From market-maker…

Yes, I see the irony.

So much talk about the benefit of crypto currencies seems - in my eyes at least - based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how societies work.

And most of all: you can’t replace trust with tech.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#226

Post by thelittleone »

addicted wrote: post #95
hombre_fatal wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the irony. The point is that Bitcoin has introduced an actual "digital cash" currency without institutional/governmental middlemen. That institutions can be built on top of that, and that some people want such institutions, doesn't change the novel utility of finally having a currency that functions like digital cash. It's like saying it's ironic that people use physical USD for anonymous p2p transactions…

No one treats Bitcoin as a currency. It’s treated as an investment vehicle. And the reason behind that is obvious. Something whose value may double in a month or whose value may halve within weeks is a terrible currency. If I expect it’s value to increase then I would be a fool to spend it. If I expect it’s value to drop I would be a fool to accept it. Cryptocurrencies are anything but currencies.

"No one treats Bitcoin as a currency. It’s treated as an investment vehicle."

I, for one, have and will continue to use it as a currency in some cases. I'm quite sure I'm not the only one.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#227

Post by ashtonkem »

Triv888 wrote: post #21
sunshinerag wrote: post #8

I have no idea what he is talking about. I use bitcoin to buy things both onchain and via lightning and the experience is so smooth and much much better than the circa 2017 period when fees were high. Don't keep it on exchange. The real thing that is stopping adoption is countries trying to classify it as a commodity and insist to pay capital gains on every microtransaction. Some countries are backwards (US, UK) than…

They want the USD to stay king of currencies...

Yeah, that is explicit US policy, and implicitly supported by most other nations that have significant debts and reserves denominated in USD.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#228

Post by Traster »

geofft wrote: post #112
Traster wrote: post #76

It really hadn't hit home to me that yes, BTC is being mined using ASICS by a handful of players, probably operating out of various authoritarian regimes. We've got the US getting all angry because TikTok is a Chinese country, and yet we've oestensibly got libertarians telling us to move out money into a currency controlled by Chinese BTC miners. It'd be fascinating if China could cause a recession in the west by tak…

That's not even the real danger. The real danger is that by controlling 51% of the network, authoritarian regimes can block transactions by people they don't like or cause people to accept money that turns out not to exist.

I think the point is that any of these style of attacks are quickly discoverable and immediately destroy the value of all bitcoins.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#229

Post by sunshinerag »

542458 wrote: post #153
sunshinerag wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your armchair analysis is on the mark. in a fiat dominated world, any market distortions caused by monetary mismanagement (money printing through QE, asset inflation) is not visible as everything in the market is priced in the same underlying asset (USD globally). Since bitcoin is outside this system it is actually holding up a mirror to the increasing worthlessness of the USD and other mismanaged fiat currencies.

Economists weren’t born yesterday. Inflation is measured in many ways, most often by looking at a basket of goods where the prices are relatively non-volatile. Using the USD/Bitcoin ratio as a yardstick for inflation seems very misguided, as Bitcoin is heavily speculated.

>> Economists weren’t born yesterday.

So? They can still be idiots. Idiocy does not have an age limit.

>> Inflation is measured in many ways, most often by looking at a basket of goods where the prices are relatively non-volatile.

Meaning you remove the items from the basket if it's price jump too much ? so if you tamper with the items in the basket you can project(pretend) that the inflation is not happening.?

>> using the USD/Bitcoin ratio as a yardstick for inflation seems very misguided, as Bitcoin is heavily speculated.

No it doesn't need to be a yardstick as Bitcoin is not yet in full circulation in the economy but it's growth indicates people are increasingly prioritising it over paper to store value.

Re: speculation, everything is a speculation, there are those who keep holding USD in cash and banks and keep speculating that the economic prophets will do the right thing to retain value in their chosen currency.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#230

Post by oblio »

radiator wrote: post #174
exclusiv wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. And barring an unlikely collapse, cash/dollar isn't going to fluctuate much at all in value. So... a feature. At this point, bitcoin is a competitor to gold as an asset store. Maybe it will be more like a currency at some point. But there's a long way to go and a lot of forces against it for that to occur.

Just pointing out; there exist also those who consider the possibility of a collapse of cash/dollar more likely than your estimate.

There exist those who predict the collapse of everything. That's not a valid answer.

Who are they? How many are they? What insight do they have that we don't have? Is this chance higher than the possibility of collapse for Bitcoin?

Post reply on HN