>Is x a scam because I don't understand it/I'm priced out? Uh, no. Though fiat currency is definitely a scam.
Why?
Is Bitcoin a Scam?
61–70 of 106 posts
Re: Is Bitcoin a Scam?
#62Not a scam, just bad tech. If you compare it to say https://nano.org It's understandable though, it was first and drives on the network effects and its name ever since.
It's akin to IPv4 and IPv6. IPv4 is obviously the worse tech, but because of the scarcity and network effects the value of IPv4 addresses will keep climbing.
IPv4 is vastly superior to IPv6. The latter being far too complicated and over designed to have any justification for adoption other than IPv4 scarcity. 20 years later and your average non-engineer "power user" can barely get it working without a ton of handholding.
Re: Is Bitcoin a Scam?
#63When scam becomes self sustaining (even in the face of repeated evidence it’s a scam), is it still a scam? It seems like this is built into the value of Bitcoin at this point. Someone could stand up and say “behold, I am manipulating the price of Bitcoin for my own gain, through nefarious means” and people would just think “well, after the price collapses because of this, someone else is bound to manipulate the price…
If something (not Bitcoin, but just speaking generally) is a scam, the quality of self-sustainment wouldn't make it any less of a scam. The idea that being able to sustain a scam somehow legitimizes it, is essentially how Bernie Madoff justified his actions.
“Everybody thinks the worst of me. The only thing I’m happy about is I was able to help people recover … There’s nothing for me to change from. It’s not like I ever considered myself a bad person.”
https://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/bernie-madoff-intervi...
"The facts were that the majority of my individual clients were net winners."
https://www.cnbc.com/2015/04/07/in-new-emails-madoff-says-fr...
Re: Is Bitcoin a Scam?
#64- Proof of work is inherently wasteful. - The ever expanding blockchain is wasteful (in storage, computation, network). - Having every transaction recorded forever is the opposite of anonymity ("pseudonymous" - come on!). - The energy usage is insane. - The throughput is way too slow. While there may be an anonymous digital currency that doesn't use a lot of energy, it probably has to be based on something other than…
> Proof of work is inherently wasteful. But it's a necessary evil for a _distributed_ currency. It's a way to protect payment validation from being controlled by a single operator by making a "hostile take over" very expensive. IMHO criticizing Bitcoin for its "proof of work" algorithm only converys a serious lack of understanding of how crypto currencies actually work. There is an alternative, namely, the "proof of…
> Yes, 10 minutes is not very fast. However, compare that to inter bank transactions and this number seems blazingly fast again
Near instant bank transfers have been available in a lot of countries for many years now. Or did you mean something else?
Re: Is Bitcoin a Scam?
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
betamax was better tech than vhs. it's adoption that counts.
What I don't get though is how people are satisfied paying so much in fees for sending coins. I get that bitcoin isn't really used as a currency but as digital gold. But still, so much money simply wasted. At least considering an exchange like coinbase. Perhaps there is a way to send/buy/sell bitcoin at nearly no cost that I am not aware of.
Digital gold is the part I feel least confident in. Gold is inherently useful. BTC maximalists retreated from transaction utility to SoV arguments.
Re: Is Bitcoin a Scam?
#66- Proof of work is inherently wasteful. - The ever expanding blockchain is wasteful (in storage, computation, network). - Having every transaction recorded forever is the opposite of anonymity ("pseudonymous" - come on!). - The energy usage is insane. - The throughput is way too slow. While there may be an anonymous digital currency that doesn't use a lot of energy, it probably has to be based on something other than…
> Proof of work is inherently wasteful. But it's a necessary evil for a _distributed_ currency. It's a way to protect payment validation from being controlled by a single operator by making a "hostile take over" very expensive. IMHO criticizing Bitcoin for its "proof of work" algorithm only converys a serious lack of understanding of how crypto currencies actually work. There is an alternative, namely, the "proof of…
> criticizing Bitcoin for its "proof of work" algorithm only converys a serious lack of understanding of how crypto currencies actually work
Other algorithms exist and further innovations are likely. I don't agree that BTC's design features are beyond criticism.
Re: Is Bitcoin a Scam?
#67- Proof of work is inherently wasteful. - The ever expanding blockchain is wasteful (in storage, computation, network). - Having every transaction recorded forever is the opposite of anonymity ("pseudonymous" - come on!). - The energy usage is insane. - The throughput is way too slow. While there may be an anonymous digital currency that doesn't use a lot of energy, it probably has to be based on something other than…
> Proof of work is inherently wasteful. But it's a necessary evil for a _distributed_ currency. It's a way to protect payment validation from being controlled by a single operator by making a "hostile take over" very expensive. IMHO criticizing Bitcoin for its "proof of work" algorithm only converys a serious lack of understanding of how crypto currencies actually work. There is an alternative, namely, the "proof of…
In addition of being quite bad in latency, a single block also cannot hold a lot of transactions. You'll always have to store the mass of transactions somewhere else, which takes away from the purpose of blockchain in the first place.
Re: Is Bitcoin a Scam?
#68- Proof of work is inherently wasteful. - The ever expanding blockchain is wasteful (in storage, computation, network). - Having every transaction recorded forever is the opposite of anonymity ("pseudonymous" - come on!). - The energy usage is insane. - The throughput is way too slow. While there may be an anonymous digital currency that doesn't use a lot of energy, it probably has to be based on something other than…
Many of these properties follow from the design principles of decentralization and censorship resistance.
> Proof of work is inherently wasteful
This seems unavoidable for distributing new coins more fairly than just letting the creators print themselves a huge pile out of thin air, which would centralize coin ownership.
> The ever expanding blockchain is wasteful (in storage, computation, network).
Bandwidth costs are unavoidable for both transaction publishing (censorship resistance) and for verifying the transaction history in the Initial Block Download (decentralization requires widespread full verification), although the latter could in principle be mostly eliminated with a zero knowledge proving system.
> Having every transaction recorded forever is the opposite of anonymity
This is not necessitated by the design principles. Bitcoin chose to make amounts visible so that total supply could be transparently audited and because Confidential Transactions had yet to be developed (one variety of which is perfectly sound, needing no cryptographic assumptions to guard against inflation). Allowing address re-use seems like a design mistake that could have been avoided, e.g. with stealth addresses.
> The energy usage is insane.
This is a direct consequence of the high price of Bitcoin; i.e. needing to secure a high market map against double spending attacks. Which goes back to the top item.
> The throughput is way too slow.
Even with second layer solutions, we still need on-chain onramps and settlements. Low throughput is the price to pay for censorship resistance.
Re: Is Bitcoin a Scam?
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Proof of work is inherently wasteful. But it's a necessary evil for a _distributed_ currency. It's a way to protect payment validation from being controlled by a single operator by making a "hostile take over" very expensive. IMHO criticizing Bitcoin for its "proof of work" algorithm only converys a serious lack of understanding of how crypto currencies actually work. There is an alternative, namely, the "proof of…
> Yes, 10 minutes is not very fast. However, compare that to inter bank transactions and this number seems blazingly fast again Near instant bank transfers have been available in a lot of countries for many years now. Or did you mean something else?
Well, "SWIFT" international bank transactions require up to 5 work days. Here in Germany, sending money from one bank to another still takes at least one up to three _work_ days. So in the worst case, you're wiring money to sb on Friday and he will receive it by Wednesday. Compare that to 10 minutes required by Bitcoin anywhere on the planet.
Of course, there are special purpose banking products to accelerate transactions but they are also more expensive than Bitcoin's miner fee.
Re: Is Bitcoin a Scam?
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, the first and last points are the worst IMO. The others could be worked around maybe, but as long as it takes 3+ hours to carry out a transaction, and the resource requirements for partaking in the network are ever-increasing, I just can't see it ever scaling to be usable.
> The others could be worked around maybe, but as long as it takes 3+ hours to carry out a transaction So does bank transfers though, and we have been able to work around that for quite some time now.
The throughput in banks is orders of magnitudes greater than for Bitcoin. Transactions are carried out instantly and processed at least once daily in huge and super fast batches.
You could add a layer for fast transactions to BTC but IIRC it can't handle processing nearly enough of them into the blockchain per day.