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Bitcoin Makes Even Smart People Feel Dumb

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Re: Bitcoin Makes Even Smart People Feel Dumb

#91

Post by wmf »

logfromblammo wrote: post #67
wmf wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh BTW there are people manipulating this stock behind the scenes. Is it still easy to predict the price?

Predicting the price is only an intermediate step to answering the question "How much should I invest in this stock?" In the case of the penny stock with no business activity, you can usually just skip the valuation step and go straight to "invest nothing". There are exceptions, of course, but all of them involve you having some information not generally available to the public.

Which leads to a conclusion of "never invest in crypto-anything" which works fine for me but is not what many people want to hear.

Re: Bitcoin Makes Even Smart People Feel Dumb

#92

Post by sowbug »

phailhaus wrote: post #53

I've noticed this about Bitcoin. It's not hard to understand at all, but everyone attempts to dive into the technical details right from the start and this loses most people. The core conceit that people gloss over is the fact there is no such thing as a "wallet" that "stores" bitcoins. The only thing that exists is a public record of numbers saying they're giving bitcoins to other numbers. When you create a "wallet"…

Replace that public record with a physical ledger, replace digital signatures with handwritten signatures, and replace proof of work with a requirement to write a haiku of sufficient wittiness and relevance to the lines on the page including the prior page's haiku, and you have a version of Bitcoin that doesn't even need computers.

You need something like a telephone party line, too, but that part can be skipped over; it still works if people sit close enough that they form a peer-to-peer earshot network.

Re: Bitcoin Makes Even Smart People Feel Dumb

#93

Post by eudoxus »

atemerev wrote: post #12

What's hard to understand about the fork? Bitcoin is an equation. A mathematical specification of how much bitcoins are there at any given moment of time, how new blocks are added to the chain, which sequence of blocks is accepted to be authoritative, etc. This is why it is a work of genius. An equation can't be hacked, unless you can challenge underlying mathematical assumptions, which is somewhat hard to do. Howeve…

This explains nothing about the fork, what changed, and why it happened.

Re: Bitcoin Makes Even Smart People Feel Dumb

#94

Post by nunb »

phailhaus wrote: post #53

I've noticed this about Bitcoin. It's not hard to understand at all, but everyone attempts to dive into the technical details right from the start and this loses most people. The core conceit that people gloss over is the fact there is no such thing as a "wallet" that "stores" bitcoins. The only thing that exists is a public record of numbers saying they're giving bitcoins to other numbers. When you create a "wallet"…

Excellent distillation of its core concept and its free speech nature. Just as much as decss for example.

Re: Bitcoin Makes Even Smart People Feel Dumb

#95

Post by nunb »

sowbug wrote: post #92
phailhaus wrote: post #53

I've noticed this about Bitcoin. It's not hard to understand at all, but everyone attempts to dive into the technical details right from the start and this loses most people. The core conceit that people gloss over is the fact there is no such thing as a "wallet" that "stores" bitcoins. The only thing that exists is a public record of numbers saying they're giving bitcoins to other numbers. When you create a "wallet"…

Replace that public record with a physical ledger, replace digital signatures with handwritten signatures, and replace proof of work with a requirement to write a haiku of sufficient wittiness and relevance to the lines on the page including the prior page's haiku, and you have a version of Bitcoin that doesn't even need computers. You need something like a telephone party line, too, but that part can be skipped over…

Is the telephone party line protected free speech?

Re: Bitcoin Makes Even Smart People Feel Dumb

#96

Post by csuwldcat »

charlesdm wrote: post #77
csuwldcat wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is a store of value that will long-term net-increase as true monetary bubbles, like this: http://imgur.com/a/0ZoDu , pop and cause their base currencies to long-term net-decrease.

Aren't you just transferring from one asset (bubble) into another? Holding your wealth in shares of a company is a way to combat that, so is holding real estate and other assets (e.g. IP rights). Something can't be a reliable store of value if it can drop (or increase) 50-100-200% in a day. That is, in the best case, a speculative instrument. If I had $50m, why wouldn't I invest it in property rather than in Bitcoin?

Property is subject to bubbles, and in almost any economic recession prices of real estate tend to fall (demand drops, and sellers/supply grows). Bitcoin is a far better asset hedge, as it possesses almost every property of commodities, like gold, without almost all of their negatives.

Re: Bitcoin Makes Even Smart People Feel Dumb

#97

Post by slededit »

exogeny wrote: post #43
tuddman wrote: post #18

Author is projecting. Replaced "me" with "people" in writing this. Considered himself smart; tried to wrap head around Bitcoin, but lacks math/cs/finance background, and or curiosity to dig below surface level hype or read blockchain-y things beyond what's written by other lazy journalists ...? (now I'm projecting). Doesn't 'get it'. Plenty of people understand Bitcoin. Go read the whitepaper.

>Plenty of people understand Bitcoin. Go read the whitepaper. Plenty of people on HN. Maybe. And that's about it. Mainstream acceptance is far, far away, and having a condescending attitudes towards those who struggle with the concept is not going to help.

Most people don't understand central banking, yet they use the existing monetary system just fine. Mainstream acceptance doesn't require universal knowledge - merely trust.

Re: Bitcoin Makes Even Smart People Feel Dumb

#98

Post by sgnelson »

thephyber wrote: post #52
puranjay wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is what makes Bitcoin's democratic credentials so ridiculous. "It will free us from fiat money!" No it won't. It's just a transfer of wealth from educated elite to other educated elite. 99% of the world's population can't understand it. 99.5% can't mine it. It's so damn elitist that it's not even funny.

> 99.5% can't mine it. Not relevant. Mining is no longer profitable for any new entrants without some incredible innovation in computing power or electricity costs. Even the miners are unlikely to make money from mining only from holding their mining gains as investments. > 99% of the world's population can't understand it. That's underselling the human population. I would posit 10-20% are probably mentally incapable…

If nothing else, it requires a computer and a network connection. Yes that may be just a smartphone of some type, but that's something that paper currencies do not require to use. If nothing else, that leaves what, a billionish people* out of Bitcoin?

It certainly is much more elitist than typical currencies if it requires a certain level of capital and knowledge to use.

*Scientific Wild Ass Guess on amount of people in the world lacking a device capable of dealing with bitcoins.

Re: Bitcoin Makes Even Smart People Feel Dumb

#99

Post by sowbug »

nunb wrote: post #95
sowbug wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replace that public record with a physical ledger, replace digital signatures with handwritten signatures, and replace proof of work with a requirement to write a haiku of sufficient wittiness and relevance to the lines on the page including the prior page's haiku, and you have a version of Bitcoin that doesn't even need computers. You need something like a telephone party line, too, but that part can be skipped over…

Is the telephone party line protected free speech?

Up to you. Depends on which technical aspect(s) you're trying to explain.

Re: Bitcoin Makes Even Smart People Feel Dumb

#100

Post by the_d00d »

thephyber wrote: post #52
puranjay wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is what makes Bitcoin's democratic credentials so ridiculous. "It will free us from fiat money!" No it won't. It's just a transfer of wealth from educated elite to other educated elite. 99% of the world's population can't understand it. 99.5% can't mine it. It's so damn elitist that it's not even funny.

> 99.5% can't mine it. Not relevant. Mining is no longer profitable for any new entrants without some incredible innovation in computing power or electricity costs. Even the miners are unlikely to make money from mining only from holding their mining gains as investments. > 99% of the world's population can't understand it. That's underselling the human population. I would posit 10-20% are probably mentally incapable…

Not to be a pedantic, but I guess I will be. From bitcoin.org

"Bitcoin - with capitalization, is used when describing the concept of Bitcoin, or the entire network itself. e.g. "I was learning about the Bitcoin protocol today." bitcoin - without capitalization, is used to describe bitcoins as a unit of account. e.g. "I sent ten bitcoins today."; it is also often abbreviated BTC or XBT."

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