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Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

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Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#61

Post by stale2002 »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #11
colordrops wrote: post #3

No it's not, but the cryptocurrency revolution it kicked off, is.

Curious what fundamentals CCs bring to the table over traditional fiat, digital or physical. Because the downsides look brutal: difficult to understand, fragile, non-reversible (sometimes a pro but often a con), expensive to operate, volatile, incompatible with KYC (sometimes a pro but often a con), etc

The obvious answer is censorship resistance.

If you want an example, for why censorship resistance is useful, you can look back at 2011, when donations were stopped, to wikileaks, even though they were not charged with any crimes.

Crypto donations worked for them though. Bring up whatever thing that you want, about the problems, but at the end of the day, crypto donations worked for them, and visa didn't.

It is useful, to be able to make transactions to other people, in situations where banks, or credit card processors, attempt to block the transactions (even though no one has been charged with any crimes!)

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#62

Post by okareaman »

I have no doubt that Bitcoin specialists are very smart people but they keep advocating a dumb-simple brute force algorithm to secure their money even after people state the obvious that it wastes vast amounts of electricity for very little benefit and a great deal of harm to the majority of humanity. Can they secure their Bitcoin with a smarter algorithm? Apparently not, because they are too busy being greedy and denying the truth.

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#64

Post by entelechy0 »

joeblau wrote: post #42

Go to the git repo on GitHub, check out the code, go to the first commit, and see how many times the word “Poker” is in the code base. Bitcoin was simply designed to be an in game currency for a poker game, but the narrative has been co-opted by so many people that it’s become something else.

this sounds like a joke tbh maybe the word 'poker' does appear many times, but have you even read the white paper? no mention of poker in there

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#65

Post by RIMR »

golergka wrote: post #22

Drugs. I feel like I'm making the same comment on any of these articles, so I'll just post this one word from now on. You can't buy drugs without bitcoin. A significant portion of all bitcoin transactions in the world are going to Russian drug marketplace Hydra. This forces bitcoin on many, many people who are not technology or finance enthusiasts, but just want to make a transaction.

Buddy, I buy drugs all the time, and never have I ever needed a bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#67

Post by bob33212 »

colordrops wrote: post #33
paulryanrogers wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious what fundamentals CCs bring to the table over traditional fiat, digital or physical. Because the downsides look brutal: difficult to understand, fragile, non-reversible (sometimes a pro but often a con), expensive to operate, volatile, incompatible with KYC (sometimes a pro but often a con), etc

The very clear and main thing it brings is getting rid of the middleman, at least for transactions, whether it be governments or businesses. This is a bigger deal than it sounds, as the middle man defines most policy around transactions, whether it be who can trade, when, and how, which creates huge imbalances in fairness and accessibility, and also can be enforced at nation state borders. These may be seen as cons b…

I want a middle man in most of my transactions.

Just imagine if a gas station changed their prices to ounces instead of gallons and you filled up your gas tank for $3000 before you realized the scam. With no middle man that money is gone. With a credit card you can refuse the charge and tell the credit card company who will ban that seller from their network and not charge you.

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#68

Post by tinomaxgalvin »

endisneigh wrote: post #43

When there’s a currency that has a fixed price and is cheaper than visa to transfer and is instant, I’ll be on board. Otherwise, what’s the point - other than making money? I’d love to use a stable coin for micro transactions

What you are describing is just a PayPal competitor.

(At least in the UK bank to bank transfers are free and instant for consumers anyway)

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#69

Post by rvense »

colordrops wrote: post #3

No it's not, but the cryptocurrency revolution it kicked off, is.

I still don't see it: Money is trust in society remaining stable, condensed to (almost) physical form. That's how I can turn energy, resources and labour into money, because I can expect to turn it back into either of those things. If something happens to the value of the Euro and I'm not able to do that reliably anymore, it will be a symptom of a much larger dysfunction in my immediate surroundings than can be helped by holding some other currency, decentralized or not.

I also don't want it: Cryptocurrency is a new financial sector, and it will inevitably come with a new set of institutions, led by a new set of people. And instead of a group of fairly boring, fairly conservative central bankers whose main goal is preservation of the system underpinning current society, we will get some weird hodgepodge of libertarians extremists, run-of-the-mill grifters and Ponzi schemers, plus whatever set of state-sponsored actors whose ambitions are mostly geopolitical, rather than economic. And all even more beyond democratic institutional control than even the most detached 20th century investment banker would have dared dream of.

Re: Bitcoin is failing at becoming the future of money

#70

Post by andrewzah »

Bitcoin was a great proof of concept. But now it's just a horrendous waste of energy, all for people to hoard their coins in a get-rich-quick scheme.

Bitcoin needs to die. The useful parts can get incorporated into cryptocurrencies that are actually used as currencies and not for hoarding.

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