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Bitcoin is a disaster

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Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#41

Post by SoSoRoCoCo »

rmason wrote: post #14

I was real excited the first time that Bitcoin was explained to me. I saw it as the first real alternative to paper money. But what I soon learned is that most of the people associated with Bitcoin saw it as digital gold and were only interested in seeing the value rise and cashing out. I've seen a few positive developments every once in a while that fail to get much adoption. So I keep waiting and waiting. It increa…

Same here. I thought it sounded great because I have zero knowledge of monetary policy, which has been at it in modern form since Isaac Newton. So naturally I thought it was a godsend. Truth is: financial institutions aren't just something a few hackers can whip up in a decade. The mill-billionaire bitcoin hackers were in the right place at the right time for lightening to strike. I think like ADAS/SDV, cryptocurrency has a looooong way to go.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#42

Post by acjohnson55 »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #13

Completely agreeable, albeit it misses a point: Governments can't print more of it. That's it really, everything else is noise. I can sympathize with btc (I wish we still had a gold standard, or a standard based on the price of common goods) but I don't see much the other benefits. On top of this, governments could ban btc.

> Completely agreeable, albeit it misses a point: Governments can't print more of it.

That only matters if Bitcoin has a monopoly for a given use case. Bitcoins chief advantage is its hash power, and therefore, its security. So far, the only use case I can think of that relies strongly on that is digital gold use case.

For everything else, having a constrained money supply has side effects that are often pretty undesirable. Folks can simply mint new coins for those use cases.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#43

Post by baby »

raziel2701 wrote: post #29
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…

What kind of things do you buy with it and where? I remember seeing some adoption back when steam started accepting it, but sometime later they stopped because it was too volatile. I thought paying fees for the transaction made bitcoin very unappealing as well. It's not anonymous either, so I just couldn't find a reason to use it as it didn't solve anything that I couldn't do with my credit card. And my credit card o…

Last time I checked it was the only currency accepted by most dark markets.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#44

Post by jancsika »

> Hal shipped the prototype because he had just been told he had a terminal illness.

That's from Phillip Hallam-Baker.

Is there evidence Hal was Satoshi, or is this just more speculation?

Or am I misunderstanding his response?

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#45

Post by Finnucane »

rmason wrote: post #14

I was real excited the first time that Bitcoin was explained to me. I saw it as the first real alternative to paper money. But what I soon learned is that most of the people associated with Bitcoin saw it as digital gold and were only interested in seeing the value rise and cashing out. I've seen a few positive developments every once in a while that fail to get much adoption. So I keep waiting and waiting. It increa…

> "But what I soon learned is that most of the people associated with Bitcoin saw it as digital gold "

Since it was basically designed to work like a pseudo-physical commodity, and most of the rhetoric to support its existence is warmed-over goldbuggery, why should this be surprising?

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#46

Post by jbob2000 »

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…

It’s like refactoring a codebase without understanding the problems behind the current implementation, and then acting surprised when the code is just as ugly.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#47

Post by louwrentius »

This is written from the perspective of a person who believes in blockchain-based currencies but thinks Bitcoin as an implementation of said currency is a failure. He thinks the concept of mining is a fundamental flaw.

But he keeps the door open for different implementations. Personally, I think the whole concept of blockchain-based currencies is flawed. But let’s not go there right now.

The value of Bitcoin is very high and that’s very scary. Who is buying? All those investors who have no place else to go? Gambling on Bitcoin to find ‘growth’?

Bitcoin is quickly becoming too big to fail. But it will fail at some point, because I believe it isn’t anything. (You may disagree, but hear me out). So when the music stops, I think it could be the event that triggers another 2007/2008. Bot big enough by itself. But it triggers the same avalanche of bankruptcies, the dominos will fall.

This time though, all financial instruments to save us are exhausted. Interest is zero. The worst may yet to come.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#48

Post by ant6n »

keithwhor wrote: post #24

Related: the current rise of Bitcoin prices has been peculiar to me, and seems to be a bit of a canary in an inflationary coal mine. We've injected trillions of dollars of fiat into the economy this year. It feels like the sky-high valuations of technology companies and Bitcoin are "shock absorbers" of sorts, or early signals of inflation-yet-to-come. If we assume the market is efficiently pricing these assets (like…

But then what would one invest in? The stock market may just as easily crash.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#49

Post by corty »

raziel2701 wrote: post #29
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…

What kind of things do you buy with it and where? I remember seeing some adoption back when steam started accepting it, but sometime later they stopped because it was too volatile. I thought paying fees for the transaction made bitcoin very unappealing as well. It's not anonymous either, so I just couldn't find a reason to use it as it didn't solve anything that I couldn't do with my credit card. And my credit card o…

> What kind of things do you buy with it and where?

Drugs, CP, cryptotrojan ransom, other crime related transactions.

Bitcoin value is directly related to relevant criminal activity.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#50

Post by 37ef_ced3 »

tryptophan wrote: post #18

> The pseudonymity of coins being owned by the bearer of some > cryptographic key is a failure; People have been eavesdropping and > aggressively analyzing the block chain from day 1. And the block chain > will always be there, it will always be public, and it will always be > subject to further analysis. And we are learning that analysis of that > record is sufficient to destroy any pretense of anonymity or > pseudo…

I wonder how many Bitcoin users have read and understand the following extensive list of privacy "pitfalls" (mistakes that can reveal information about unwary Bitcoin users):

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Privacy

Are you careful to avoid these numerous privacy pitfalls? If not, you're leaking information about yourself, into the public ledger (blockchain)

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