Money corrupts; bitcoin corrupts absolutely • Hacker News Board

Re: Money corrupts; bitcoin corrupts absolutely

#91

Post by jancsika » Sat, Mar 13, 2021, 6:11 PM UTC

matheusmoreira wrote: post #14

> Have I been salty? Definitely. There's no point in denying that. I could've purchased a home had I been in a coma until now. That about sums it all up. I too watched the rise of bitcoin and was too lazy to mine some on my own computer. I have screenshots of people buying pizza for like 20 BTC. All we had to do was buy some. We can still do it. > If I'd have deserved it is something else. Does it matter if you "dese…

> All we had to do was buy some. We can still do it.

So you look at the four orders of magnitude that separate the famous "dude overpaying for pizza with Bitcoins" from the current price. And you apparently feel so strongly you leave out the argument for why that is relevant to encouraging others on HN to make a current investment in Bitcoin.

Are you seriously implying that a Bitcoin will be worth $500,000,000 over the next decade? I don't think you are, so what's the relevance of history of Bitcoin's price? Why does that generate FOMO in you?

Is there a more persuasive explanation than simple gold fever? Are you really not able to think of practical circumstances which would cause the price of Bitcoin to go down?

Re: Money corrupts; bitcoin corrupts absolutely

#92

Post by CyberRabbi » Sat, Mar 13, 2021, 6:11 PM UTC

This is a rant about a personal experience. I couldn’t help but imagine tears running down his face while he wrote this. Bitcoin has done a lot of good in the world, the existence of some trolls on the internet doesn’t negate that.

Re: Money corrupts; bitcoin corrupts absolutely

#93

Post by lottin » Sat, Mar 13, 2021, 6:11 PM UTC

wolfretcrap wrote: post #7

Problem with bitcoin is there's no way to redistribute wealth. How about giving inactive bitcoins to new people? Is it possible? Can you really access the bitcoins that were created at the beginning without updating your bitcoins to latest standards. How do you even update your bitcoin?

Actually Bitcoin is all about wealth redistribution. It is not possible to make money with Bitcoin unless it is at the expense of somebody else. And the fact that some people are making money with it indicates such redistribution is taking place.

Re: Money corrupts; bitcoin corrupts absolutely

#94

Post by rawtxapp » Sat, Mar 13, 2021, 6:11 PM UTC

fullshark wrote: post #74

rawtxapp wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The community around Bitcoin is one of the most toxic. If you go on places like Twitter and reddit somewhat, I agree with you. But if you look on Github, you'll see some of the smartest engineers of our generation working real hard and I wouldn't discount their work based on some loud mouths on social networks.

Sometimes I wonder if getting people to click on more ads was actually a more socially beneficial project for that talent.

If you look at it from the perspective that ad-clicking has funded the biggest information retrieval system and the biggest human connection platform, yes it was overall socially beneficial.

Re: Money corrupts; bitcoin corrupts absolutely

#95

Post by slibhb » Sat, Mar 13, 2021, 6:11 PM UTC

DaniloDias wrote: post #24

This is a weird, angry screed. Op should read The Ascent of Money and maybe worry less about the moral failings of other humans. Peace and trust cannot exist without currency. Money lubricates peaceful resolution of conflict. If you need food and I have it, trade or violence are your only options if currency doesn’t exist. Screaming at Bitcoin is like screaming at evolution. As long as humans evolve, money will keep…

> If you need food and I have it, trade or violence are your only options if currency doesn’t exist.

Another option is debt. You give me the food and I owe you something equivalent later.

Re: Money corrupts; bitcoin corrupts absolutely

#96

Post by swiley » Sat, Mar 13, 2021, 6:12 PM UTC

peter422 wrote: post #17

I have thought about this with Bitcoin: if the protocol and potential capabilities are so interesting, why is 99% of the conversation related to Bitcoin about the current price. It does make me believe that greed is the predominant driver of most Bitcoin holders, which to me makes the whole concept a lot less principled than people pretend it is.

The only reason I have some crypto is for paying for things.

The only way to do MMS over the internet that isn't completely crazy* or requires a google account is jmp.chat as far as I can tell. It looks like they originally accepted paypal and paypal did it's thing so now the default is bitcoin. For small projects like this bitcoin is one of the easier ways to set up payments.

My DNS provider also had a bug in their payment form when I went to renew the domain name (or maybe it was really my bank despite them telling me it was on their end, who knows.) I was able to just pay them with bitcoin and that solved the problem.

Whether you like it or not, crypto is here to stay and it's way easier for both users and developers.

*One of the providers I was looking at even tried activating my camera on the log in page (the browser didn't say anything but the camera on that machine is weird and if you don't use a special API it just spams the kernel log with errors, idk how they did it.)

Re: Money corrupts; bitcoin corrupts absolutely

#97

Post by lottin » Sat, Mar 13, 2021, 6:12 PM UTC

CryptoBanker wrote: post #10

wolfretcrap wrote: post #7

Problem with bitcoin is there's no way to redistribute wealth. How about giving inactive bitcoins to new people? Is it possible? Can you really access the bitcoins that were created at the beginning without updating your bitcoins to latest standards. How do you even update your bitcoin?

Could you access your money in the bank if you refused to update their app? Or if you refused to use technology more modern than a carrier pigeon? Or what if you refused to update your drivers license?

Yes. Why?

Re: Money corrupts; bitcoin corrupts absolutely

#98

Post by Klinky » Sat, Mar 13, 2021, 6:12 PM UTC

dastx wrote: post #84

Bitcoin isn't claiming that it takes corruption out of the human psyche. Corrupt people stay corrupt. All bitcoin does is take unfounded trust away from individual organisations and governments, and instead puts that trust in maths and the collective. It never claimed that it will combat corruption, and likely never will. NFTs are definitely switching me off from cryptocurrencies as I find the use of it ridiculous. S…

> take unfounded trust away from individual organisations and governments, and instead puts that trust in maths and the collective

If by "collective" you mean a tiny portion of the community that are core developers, megaminers, megapools, exchanges and whales, uhh, then sure, but that doesn't seem much different than fiat. There is still an elite minority in control.

Re: Money corrupts; bitcoin corrupts absolutely

#99

Post by gonehome » Sat, Mar 13, 2021, 6:13 PM UTC

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #33

gnrlst wrote: post #19

The community around Bitcoin is one of the most toxic. It's the main reason I haven't bought, and won't buy, any BTC (regardless of the fact I think the tech is completely subpar). Having said that, there's plenty of really great communities around crypto that shouldn't be pooled together along with Bitcoin. Nano, for example, is probably the most hated altcoin by Bitcoin maximalists (probably because they feel threa…

> regardless of the fact I think the tech is completely subpar > Bitcoin uses the Hashcash proof of work system. Do you feel that way about all proof of work systems? Do you prefer proof of stake instead? Can you elaborate on what you find subpar about the tech surrounding Bitcoin?

I briefly looked at nano based on the OP’s comment expecting to see proof of stake, but it looks like something more interesting? https://docs.nano.org/what-is-nano/overview/#what-is-nano

I don’t understand how it works yet, but I generally hold what I think is your skepticism for proof-of-stake.

To me, proof-of-stake takes all the technical guarantees of the blockchain and throws them out for a hand-wavy weak guarantee of correctness based on incentive structure. I don’t see how it’s that different from historical digital (or even fiat) currencies based on trust.

Proof-of-work is the interesting bit it crypto currencies.

Re: Money corrupts; bitcoin corrupts absolutely

#100

Post by beaconstudios » Sat, Mar 13, 2021, 6:14 PM UTC

overscore wrote: post #51

seibelj wrote: post #13

> and lastly, it having a multitude of popular proponents with extreme viewpoints such as “animals have no rights”, or the right to bear arms which strikes me as vile, unethical, and borderline insane The right to bear arms is an extreme right wing viewpoint? This is quite the rant but the author is all over the map

Based on their bio, the author appears to be based in Belgium. Although I have my own thoughts on the matter, outside the US, the right to bear arms is indeed an extreme right-wing viewpoint.

I'm in the UK - I used to belong to a gun club and could have easily gone forward to own a rifle if I wanted to, including a semi-automatic (only in .22). I believe most countries in Europe have similar policies. The main difference between here and the US is the categories of weapon you're allowed to use; here it's primarily sporting or hunting weapons where in the US, using guns for defence (and using serious calibres for sporting/hunting) is within the Overton window.

Note that you can get serious calibre rifles in the UK but only in bolt or lever action. Case in point: https://www.gunstar.co.uk/desert-tech-hti-bolt-action-50-rif...