Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bitcoin is a disaster

metzdowd.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

811–820 of 992 posts

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#811

Post by arcticbull »

throwaway666494 wrote: post #738
Taek wrote: post #709

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin has the most infrastructure surrounding it. And Bitcoin is the most careful to make life easy for infrastructure providers. Eth is very challenging to operate securely. Breaking updates are frequent, often with little warning. Bitcoin hasn't changed in many years, and new software updates are optional, and don't require you to write any new code or change how you operate. Most other cryptos suffer from the sa…

Breaking updates are not frequent, there's never been a breaking update on the ethereum blockchain. Bitcoin changes all the time (e.g., taproot)

Remember the DAO?

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#812

Post by kim0 »

NosyHammock wrote: post #4

>And we are learning that analysis of that record is sufficient to destroy any pretense of anonymity or pseudonymity. Fortunately we have Monero! And pretty much every other issue too he raises, Monero has it better.

Monero really is what most people thought Bitcoin was!

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#813

Post by arcticbull »

wolco2 wrote: post #799
arcticbull wrote: post #729

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are using bitcoins price to justify its value. Price is not value, certainly not on a short timescale. Consider that in the short term a market is a popularity content but in the long term, it weighs actual value. This is another way of saying that the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. If you actually attempt to assess fundamental value of Bitcoin based on anything comparable it’…

The value of a bitcoin is the rarity of owning a coin is limited and the way it works opens up transactions globally. The price is the market demand.

oooh the rarity of owning a some digital magic beans, right, thanks I'll pass.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#814

Post by xapata »

bigphishy wrote: post #801
freewilly1040 wrote: post #774

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My critique is not about greed. My critique is about crypto proponents claiming it does things it doesn’t do. The GP complains about the overhead and data collection of traditional solutions, implying it’s a bunch of unnecessary cruft. In fact it’s to comply with local laws and protect the consumer and merchant from fraud. GP used Bitcoin to get around this hassle, renouncing any rights in the event of a dispute. Now…

actually yes, every month I pay my rent by mailing a check. Also, what is the acronym 'GP' ?

Mailing a check is not mailing cash. I'm sure you're familiar with the differences.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#815

Post by arcticbull »

mythrwy wrote: post #786
arcticbull wrote: post #725

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed however Bitcoin is positioned as a way of fighting back against these administrations. However it helps literally nobody in North Korea because they just shut down their internet.

I think Bitcoin does help people in North Korea though. Just not the average citizen.

No citizen of North Korea whose not a party member gets to use Bitcoin. The only people who do are using it to finance the hermit kingdom's nuclear weapons program. That's not a good thing.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#817

Post by whiskyant »

cesarb wrote: post #381
baby wrote: post #31

That’s nonsense. Bitcoin is as good a store of value as gold due to one unique feature: scarcity. Actually, it’s even less power consuming than the gold industry and is much more transparent. I wouldn’t really advise bitcoin for anything else, like day to day transactions, although I and many of my friends have used bitcoin to transact on dark markets and it works. The only argument I’ve heard about gold being better…

Scarcity only matters if there's demand. I could take an A4 sheet and draw a triangle on it. It's scarce (there's only one A4 sheet with that precise badly-drawn triangle), but since nobody wants it, it's worth as much as the paper it was drawn on. The same happens with both Bitcoin and gold. Since they are scarce, as long as there's enough demand their price will increase. However, there's a difference: gold has ind…

With only the industrial value of gold propping it up, its value would likely drop to 1/50th of the current price. So who cares about having a floor if it’s that low?

If Bitcoin all of a sudden had a floor that was also 1/50th of its current value, no one would care.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#818

Post by biolurker1 »

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…

Can you get banned from Pix?

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#820

Post by biolurker1 »

graeme wrote: post #510
DeafSquid wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much electricity do you think traditional money printing and transfers consume?

Much less? Bitcoin currently powers almost none of the world’s transactions, yet consumes all that energy. The entire us consumes 75 twh in a year, the same as bitcoin’s global energy use. Of that, the entire commercial sector is about 12 twh. That’s not just banks. That’s every company. Banks alone are surely far less. Maybe 2-3 twh? And the us is 15% of global gdp. So, global finance might consume about 14-32 twh.…

Bitcoin transacted way more money that PayPal etc
Post reply on HN