Bitcoin is a disaster • Hacker News Board

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#761

Post by rafaelero » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 4:37 AM UTC

deegles wrote: post #713

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.

I mean... "can't" is a pretty strong word. Sure, they probably can't break SHA256 or elliptic cryptography, but you really think a government couldn't sanction every single [random crypto coin] developer, seize every obtainable asset, and generally strong-arm them into changing the rules? I think people are not being imaginative enough with the tools state entities have at their disposal to coerce whatever result the…

It is next to impossible to seize bitcoin if you make it so. The government could try coerce custodial companies, but it will only be effective on the first time; next time, people will move their bitcoins to safer places where government intromission will be immensely costly.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#762

Post by bigphishy » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 4:39 AM UTC

freewilly1040 wrote: post #756

rkagerer wrote: post #324

I bought my smartphone from Hong Kong, in part because I wanted a specific variant that would be more likely to work with open-source ROM's. The seller initially requested payment via Transferwise, who sought crazy amounts of personal information and bullied me into a privacy-hostile customer agreement. Days went by and they still hadn't activated my account. Growing frustrated, I convinced the seller to accept Bitco…

In payments the 99% case where everyone acts in good faith and no one makes a mistake is the easy part. It's when eg the seller refuses to send the phone that the extra overhead of the traditional payment system comes into play.

Establishing trust between seller and buyer is not a new problem. The same scenario that you described could be had with mailing checks, physical cash etc. wherever there is not a trusted escrow service.

Ironically, blockchain technology is the first technology that actually solves the age old problem of how to establish trust within a truestless system.

imho Bitcoin is a novel implementation of open-source technology, cryptography, and decentralized networks. I realize hackernews community has a disdain for greed and the avarice that is commonly connoted with "cryptocurrency" aka crypto-assets, but the reality is that bitcoin and crypto-assets are here to stay, and I for one am glad they are open-source.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#763

Post by rafaelero » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 4:39 AM UTC

analog31 wrote: post #63

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.

But governments can subsidize the electricity to create new Bitcoins. Isn't that the same as printing money?

No. Blocks will always be mined with a 10 minutes interval between each other. It doesn't matter how much energy is being invested.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#764

Post by majewsky » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 4:41 AM UTC

everfree wrote: post #537

majewsky wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we have "cash you can email" that doesn't consume as much electricity as several nation states combined?

Many coins are experimenting with alternative consensus algorithms, the most promising imo is proof of stake. No wasted energy beyond the cost of running a normal computer.

Is this 2021 or 2015?

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#765

Post by bigphishy » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 4:49 AM UTC

bob33212 wrote: post #404

rkagerer wrote: post #324

I bought my smartphone from Hong Kong, in part because I wanted a specific variant that would be more likely to work with open-source ROM's. The seller initially requested payment via Transferwise, who sought crazy amounts of personal information and bullied me into a privacy-hostile customer agreement. Days went by and they still hadn't activated my account. Growing frustrated, I convinced the seller to accept Bitco…

Western Union is also very useful, but the vast majority of transactions are not made by Western Union because it has tradeoffs that make other things like credit/debit cards and checks a better option. Bitcoin Evangelists are trying to pump up the price by advocating that bitcoin will be the best method of making payments for a huge variety of use cases. I'm not going to call it a pump and dump scam because I think…

bitcoin has beaten western union, international wire transfers for years now and will continue to do so as notoriety and adoption of crypto-asset grows. However, that in no way justifies its marketcap, which is just over 500 billions. However overvalued it is, and however many times the price crashes dramatically, it is likely that the blockchain will continue to exist in 50-100 years. As long as computers and the internet still exist that is.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#766

Post by bigphishy » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 4:50 AM UTC

cesarb wrote: post #598

majewsky wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we have "cash you can email" that doesn't consume as much electricity as several nation states combined?

Here in Brazil, we have that since last month. The new money transfer system (Pix) allows anyone to send money to a key, which can be a person's CPF (the tax ID number nearly everyone has), a phone number, an email, or a randomly-generated number. These all map to a bank account (you can also use Pix to send directly to a bank account number); the directory with these mappings is kept by the Brazilian Central Bank, a…

Fascinating, this is the first time I've heard of Pix. Can you own the private key? Can you create an account without having a bank account?

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#767

Post by gruez » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 5:04 AM UTC

corty wrote: post #649

gruez wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The miners aren't the only ones enforcing the limit, so is every other bitcoin node out there. Just because you have 51% of the mining capacity doesn't mean everyone else (merchants, users, exchanges)[1] will agree. If they decide to unilaterally change the block reward all that would do is cause them to mine worthless blocks. [1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Economic_majority

No, miners are far more powerful than all the other stakeholders. While acceptance by merchants is a relevant factor, miners also have to facilitate any transaction. Any fork without miners is instantly unable to transact, making the coins useless and therefore worthless.

>Any fork without miners is instantly unable to transact, making the coins useless and therefore worthless.

The incentive structure discourages this. If half the hash power goes off to mine Bitcoin Infinite (the fork with uncapped Bitcoin generation), then mining the original Bitcoin would be twice as lucrative because there's half the competition. This gets better the more miners leave. If 95% of miners leave for Bitcoin Infinite, then mining Bitcoin becomes 20x more lucrative. There's the matter of the difficulty adjustment, but that has been historically dealt with using emergency difficulty adjustments.

Meanwhile, the miners who are mining the fork have real expenses (electricity, equipment), which need to be paid, and if there isn't sufficient demand for their Bitcoin Infinite coins, they'll quickly go bankrupt. Some napkin math:

* If the hash and economic power are both split 50-50, then there will be little impact in profitability, but also little impact on Bitcoin

* If 90% of the mining power goes to Bitcoin Infinite and only 25% of the economic power follows them, then the miners can expect to see a 72% drop in revenue. If their original profit margins were 20%, they can expect their profit margins to drop to -66%. If we use the price/generation rate of just prior to the last halving (May 2020), then that would represent a loss of $9.9M per day (not including opportunity costs/lost profits).

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#768

Post by jcrubino » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 5:05 AM UTC

firekvz wrote: post #567

arcticbull wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a godsend to a small handful of Venezuelans, it’s not a general solution as of course a transaction fee is a few months minimum wage. It does literally nothing to solve the problem more broadly. You’d be better off holding value on their behalf stateside. Of course the government could shut it off in a heartbeat. How many North Koreans does Bitcoin help?

read my answer, it's pretty well explained there

You are all missing the the trend over the last 7 years for bitcoin is to create a digital asset that is a store of wealth. To say bitcoin is a payments system in the sense of cash is to miss the executed tech roadmap where cheap one off transactions is a secondary concern (not bitcoin core's). Listen Saylor talk about MicroStrategy's investment in bitcoin. He is very clear that is a store of wealth and appreciating asset on the books, not a payment rail for MicroStrategy subscription base.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#769

Post by jiggawatts » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 5:13 AM UTC

55555 wrote: post #751

jiggawatts wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just checked, it seems that WU charges approximately 1% for transfers relative to the nominal exchange rate. I don't transfer money much, but superficially that doesn't seem too expensive considering the volatility risk to WU due to fluctuating exchange rates combined with the overheads of regulatory requirements. It seems to me that Bitcoin is only as cheap as it is because it sidesteps those regulatory overheads.…

IME, the real fees charged by WU often add up to 10-20%.

How? The pricing calculator literally says $0.00 fees for me, the only charge is the 1% spread on the exchange rate.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#770

Post by stale2002 » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 5:14 AM UTC

xapata wrote: post #702

stale2002 wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My point was that the government has control of the internet, and thereby all activity on the internet. And yet, here we are, living in a world where such controls are pretty difficult to enact and simply aren't happening. Even in places where there are government controls over the internet, such controls are apparently not even close to perfect, on many many people are successfully able to get around them. So, the…

Nope, I'm not familiar with how widespread cryptocurrency usage is for international exchange with Venezuela. I do know that they keep tight control over traditional foreign currency exchange via public markets.

> I do know that they keep tight control

I was talking about how much control they have over the internet.

The fact of the matter is, that even the most authoritarian countries out there, are simply are unable to have a 100% perfect authoritarian control over their internet, as of today.

Despite the many motivations that current authoritarian countries have for definitely wanting to control their internet, right now, the evidence is showing that they are failing to perfectly control everything over the internet.