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Bitcoin Is Time

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Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#561

Post by divbzero »

omginternets wrote: post #526
fredfoobar wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finally, I'm being recognized for my wisdom. Thank you for your kind words.

I second this. I was poised to dismiss your comment as facetiousness, and then suddenly realized that you are exactly correct. Why indeed should we prefer cars over horses for most (but of course not all) applications? Aren't we as technologists always preaching the benefits of technological conservatism, minimalism and simplicity? Our environment has obviously changed in such a way that it's now difficult to re-intr…

Yes indeed. I’ve seen HN comments that pretend to be serious until the end when you realize it was parody. This comment accomplished the reverse.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#562

Post by AndrewUnmuted »

fredfoobar wrote: post #373
boredpandas777 wrote: post #348

Let me fix that title. Happy to be downvoted into negative territory. I only have 11 points. Go ahead. "Bitcoin Is A Waste of Time (and Resources)" What Bitcoin has done is that it taught people they can come together in a sustained flash mob (like an on-the-fly hedge fund operation) and manipulate the price of speculative assets by creating artificial short-term pump-n-dump type demand. Bitcoin has trained our colle…

I've been saying the same damn thing about automobiles man, horses already have self driving even! and they don't pollute like cars. Look at the mess we're in now! who's laughing?? Cars pollute and need roads, we had to build so many roads and gas stations. We even had to go to war to make sure we have enough oil.

Horses also have a lifespan of up to 30 years. These days you're lucky if you can get 8 years out of your car.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#563

Post by hannasanarion »

cloakandswagger wrote: post #209
noxer wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Bitcoin is onto something What if it "was"? The "hate" people express against bitcoin especially here on HN is often towards the implementation. People clearly see the flaw in PoW if they are not emotionally attached to it because they have no money at stake. You should not misinterpret that as hate because they missed the train to richness. Objectively PoW does not scale. Objectively we have DLTs (blockchains) with…

>People clearly see the flaw in PoW if they are not emotionally attached to it because they have no money at stake. You should not misinterpret that as hate because they missed the train to richness. The vitriol that Bitcoin evokes from HN commenters can really only be explained by jealousy, the environmental concern is just a cover for covetousness.

The energy wastage argument isn't "environmental concern". If bitcoin were to scale up enough to combat Visa, it would twice as much energy as all the generators in the world put together can produce, just to do what Visa already does, but without fraud detection, ID verification, or reversibility.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#564

Post by californical »

fredfoobar wrote: post #548
hannasanarion wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is accidentally a good analogy. Because yes, cars have made the world materially worse, not because horses are better, but because dense urban development, public transit, walking, and cycling is better. Cars are enormously wasteful, much like bitcoin is, not only because it uses way more energy than is necessary for the task it is performing (~90% of the energy used by cars is spent to move the car, not the car…

"accidentally" Do you always feel superior to other people? or is it just today?

I think it was “accidentally” because your earlier post came off as sarcastic.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#565

Post by Aunche »

anthropodie wrote: post #370
boredpandas777 wrote: post #348

Let me fix that title. Happy to be downvoted into negative territory. I only have 11 points. Go ahead. "Bitcoin Is A Waste of Time (and Resources)" What Bitcoin has done is that it taught people they can come together in a sustained flash mob (like an on-the-fly hedge fund operation) and manipulate the price of speculative assets by creating artificial short-term pump-n-dump type demand. Bitcoin has trained our colle…

> Happy to be downvoted into negative territory. I see another comment on top doing the same. Why do people start with this? If you don't bother you should not even brought that up. Seems like an underhanded way of getting more points. Do people even fall for this?

> Do people even fall for this?

According to OP's comment, it has received 76 - 11 = 65 karma as of now.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#566

Post by olah_1 »

Aunche wrote: post #364
olah_1 wrote: post #69

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.

Bitcoin is nothing like gold. Gold has inherent value. If I buy 100% of the world's gold, gold would still be valuable. If I buy 100% of the world's bitcoin, it's the same as owning no Bitcoin. Gold would be immensely valued during an extreme global crisis (WWIII, massive solar flare, etc) whereas bitcoin would be entirely useless.

> If I buy 100% of the world's gold, gold would still be valuable

Sure, yes. It would be valuable in the way that a barrel of oil is valuable. It has a number of practical uses in electronics, medicine, etc. Valuable as a currency or means of transferring wealth? Not as much. It's cumbersome for that role.

Bitcoin's value is not "coins". It is valuable for what it does (transfer wealth). It's a ledger, not really "coins".

Did you read the original article? It's actually worth the read if you didn't yet.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#567

Post by alliao »

fredfoobar wrote: post #516
perfect_kiss wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got the feeling this post is a bit sarcastic, because it references horses, as opposed to automobiles. If you just replace "horses" with "mass public transit", "railroads" and "electrobikes", it suddenly starts to make much more sense.

Horses will work on YOUR schedule, and it's socially distanced during COVID.

with Animals being protected in my corner of the world, the way I'm neglecting my daily beater might land me in jail if it were a horse.......

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#568

Post by root_axis »

omginternets wrote: post #526
fredfoobar wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finally, I'm being recognized for my wisdom. Thank you for your kind words.

I second this. I was poised to dismiss your comment as facetiousness, and then suddenly realized that you are exactly correct. Why indeed should we prefer cars over horses for most (but of course not all) applications? Aren't we as technologists always preaching the benefits of technological conservatism, minimalism and simplicity? Our environment has obviously changed in such a way that it's now difficult to re-intr…

One argument is that horses are living creatures. Farming them as labor slaves to meet the needs of industry is cruel and would likely have comparable environmental impact to factory farming meat.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#569

Post by tablespoon »

trts wrote: post #398
gnrlst wrote: post #210

I'm ready to be downvoted to oblivion, especially by all the Bitcoin purists, but I hope my message sparks at least some curiosity. Bitcoin is getting "weaker" every year for several reasons: - emerging centralization due to economies of scale. If this trend continues the mining power will be so consolidated that a 51% attack will be likely. The Nakamoto coefficient is already at 4, and tending towards 3. - energy us…

What is the incentive for a 51% attack (on Bitcoin specifically) Wouldn't it take a large number of resources and coordinated effort to do this? And then the result of a successful attack means that the value essentially drops to zero ... so why invest the effort? Seems like the only entity to have this incentive would be central banks / fiat regimes.

> What is the incentive for a 51% attack (on Bitcoin specifically)

Besides trying to destroy bitcoin, couldn't such an attack be used to simply drive up transaction fees for anyone who wanted to use it? For instance, if they refuse to process transactions with a fee below a threshold, they'd leave money on the table in the sort term, but eventually the higher fee requirement would have to be discovered and transactions reissued to pay it.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#570

Post by lowkey »

FlyingSnake wrote: post #545
fredfoobar wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been saying the same damn thing about automobiles man, horses already have self driving even! and they don't pollute like cars. Look at the mess we're in now! who's laughing?? Cars pollute and need roads, we had to build so many roads and gas stations. We even had to go to war to make sure we have enough oil.

I almost typed a snarky remark, but then realized that you make a valid point with that analogy. However the analogy feels a little weak to me: > We even had to go to war to make sure we have enough oil I don't see countries going to war over BTC (or the mining pool) as they already have cornered all the fiat currencies in a tight system. All they could do is sabotage the BTC system and make it less lucrative for nor…

> I don't see countries going to war over BTC (or the mining pool) as they already have cornered all the fiat currencies in a tight system.

I think that's the point here. Unlike BTC which is powered by Proof of Work (POW), the US Dollar is powered by Proof of Violence (POV). As a result the full accounting for the externalities caused by US dollars would have to include the cost of supporting and using the largest military industrial complex in the history of the world to protect the market for oil being denominated in US Dollars (petrodollars).

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