The bursting of the Bitcoin bubble • Hacker News Board

Re: The bursting of the Bitcoin bubble

#31

Post by aptwebapps » Sat, Oct 22, 2011, 8:07 AM UTC

hippich wrote: post #15

Overall, reading comments on the economist site I now understand how public perception of bitcoin technology is wrong.

Well, the article is going to help that. Despite its title most of it is a very shallow overview of the currency in general while mentioning how the rate has fallen and some examples of how it is not universally accepted. Finally, in the second to last paragraph, it offers up the hypothesis that it was a speculative bubble.

Usually you get better fare from the Economist.

Re: The bursting of the Bitcoin bubble

#32

Post by jacques_chester » Sat, Oct 22, 2011, 8:28 AM UTC

ubernostrum wrote: post #25

jacques_chester wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, why should the Swiss do another country's homework? Enforcing someone else's laws is not their job. They will honour judgements or warrants issued from the benches of most countries, but they're hardly going to just give up secrecy because somebody somewhere is annoyed at them. Neutrality requires secrecy. If you favour one group with disclosure and not another group, you're no longer strictly neutral. You hav…

Well, the way I'd phrase it is that the Swiss have realized that a sense of morals shouldn't get in the way of making a lot of money.

You're putting the cart before the horse.

The Swiss desire peace. In their history they've suffered from some stunning little civil wars. In order to obtain and retain peace, they have amongst other things decided on a policy of strict neutrality. They can in part uphold this because of their geopolitical position in Europe -- an almost perfect natural fortress. It is easy to defend and they can keep themselves in food and water more or less indefinitely.

As a consequence of neutrality and defensibility, their country has natural competitive advantages in banking. Complaining about the Swiss being good at banking is like complaining about the USA being good at farming. In both cases natural features and political history have pretty much made certain outcomes more or less inevitable.

Re: The bursting of the Bitcoin bubble

#33

Post by olliesaunders » Sat, Oct 22, 2011, 8:31 AM UTC

mcantelon wrote: post #2

Bitcoin it ahead of its time. Bitcoin is has a lot of potential uses and these uses haven't gone away because a bubble burst.

It’s ahead of its time socially but not technologically or even politically. We need bitcoin now, it’s just consumers don’t realize it yet.

Re: The bursting of the Bitcoin bubble

#34

Post by anonymoushn » Sat, Oct 22, 2011, 9:43 AM UTC

andrewljohnson wrote: post #23

mcantelon wrote: post #2

Bitcoin it ahead of its time. Bitcoin is has a lot of potential uses and these uses haven't gone away because a bubble burst.

Deflationary currency is an oxymoron.

Mild deflation is the natural state of things - over time, most tasks should take less labor to accomplish because of improvements in technology and organization. Are we to prefer that a man who labors enough to buy four gallons of milk can only purchase a one if he chooses to do so 30 years later, even though the cost of producing milk in real terms (and indeed the price of milk in real terms) has decreased?

Re: The bursting of the Bitcoin bubble

#35

Post by nandemo » Sat, Oct 22, 2011, 10:04 AM UTC

andrewljohnson wrote: post #23

mcantelon wrote: post #2

Bitcoin it ahead of its time. Bitcoin is has a lot of potential uses and these uses haven't gone away because a bubble burst.

Deflationary currency is an oxymoron.

A deflationary currency might be considered undesirable but it is not an oxymoron any more that "inflationary currency" is.

Re: The bursting of the Bitcoin bubble

#36

Post by SkyMarshal » Sat, Oct 22, 2011, 4:47 PM UTC

ubernostrum wrote: post #26

SkyMarshal wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. In the long term this is just statistical noise, as long as the underlying tech and theoretical foundations are solid. People weened on CNBC and other breathless, 24/7 financial news give way too much credence to short-term market flutterings and twitterings.

Of course, the complement to this is that people whose knowledge of currency comes largely from Neal Stephenson novels give way too much credence to stories breathlessly championing Bitcoin as the future. Something that can trace its ancestry in a vague way to Bitcoin? Maybe. Bitcoin itself? Exceedingly unlikely.

I've been wondering about that too. The chances that version 1.0 got it all exactly right is less than perfect. The SolidCoin fork has some interesting criticisms of Bitcoin:

http://solidcoin.info/faq.php

Still some calibration and iteration for Bitcoin to do as new lessons are learned about P2P currency. But the Bitcoin protocol and implementation are under active development, so I wonder to what extent it can still evolve without a reboot.

Re: The bursting of the Bitcoin bubble

#37

Post by hippich » Wed, Oct 26, 2011, 1:13 AM UTC

QuestionWriter wrote: post #16

hippich wrote: post #15

Overall, reading comments on the economist site I now understand how public perception of bitcoin technology is wrong.

Do share more. I thought many of the comments were surprisingly clued-in.

Well... First of all - bitcoin is not "digital coins" or "digital gold", but p2p distributed ledger in first place.

Once you truly get it, most comments become irrelevant.