Bitcoin has few attributes of money but all the attributes of a collectible • Hacker News Board

Re: Bitcoin has few attributes of money but all the attributes of a collectible

#91

Post by la_fayette » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 6:01 AM UTC

spookthesunset wrote: post #61

fny wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a question: how many people do you know that buy crypto intend to spend it? You know, use it like currency? Or are they all just HODLing in the hopes that some other buyer will come along who believes it will become a medium of exchange? In my view, it's not a currency until people stop speculating and start using it like a currency. So yes, it's a collectible with ridiculously high transaction costs that make…

The problem with Bitcoin is it is a horrible currency. It’s slow and it doesn’t scale beyond a few transactions a second. I’ve been following Bitcoin for more than seven years and absolutely nothing about it has fundamentally changed. It has always been a “currency” majority owned by dodgy shadowy characters. It’s always been slow. It’s always been unscalable (by design!). It has always been a get rich quick pyramid…

Bitcoin is an amazing invention. For me personally it is the best store of value ever, I just need to remember my private key and travel the world and cash out in every country. The fees are totally acceptable, you can use lower fees and wait a bit longer for the transaction to get into a block. Bitcoin is definitely not a scam!

Re: Bitcoin has few attributes of money but all the attributes of a collectible

#92

Post by Spivak » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 6:01 AM UTC

rawtxapp wrote: post #64

spookthesunset wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with Bitcoin is it is a horrible currency. It’s slow and it doesn’t scale beyond a few transactions a second. I’ve been following Bitcoin for more than seven years and absolutely nothing about it has fundamentally changed. It has always been a “currency” majority owned by dodgy shadowy characters. It’s always been slow. It’s always been unscalable (by design!). It has always been a get rich quick pyramid…

I feel like beating a dead horse, but there's tons of L2 technologies at this point, lightning payment channels or rollups on eth, etc. The blockchain itself is like a settlement layer. Our current financial system is also layered similarly btw. When you buy something with your credit card, it doesn't settle right away.

But then the issue is that the settlement layer becomes an arbitrary implementation detail. The second layer is the thing that really matters. The settlement can happen in dollars or some stock in a portfolio of assets like what Libra wanted to do.

Is Bitcoin the best thing to use as an settlement layer?

Re: Bitcoin has few attributes of money but all the attributes of a collectible

#93

Post by DubiousPusher » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 6:02 AM UTC

skohan wrote: post #74

DubiousPusher wrote: post #69

I don't know why there's an article that makes the rounds once a month analogizing bitcoin to some other thing when.. 1 bitcoin is its own thing 2 bitcoin has a clear analog in the form of gold Collectibles are a terrible analogy because 1 they are not fungable and bitcoin is 2 they are not easily converted into currency whereas bitcoin is 3 they carry novelty and bitcoin does not (cryptocurrency may carry some novel…

> bitcoin does not have the track record that gold does. That's a heck of an understatement - Gold's track record dates back essentially to the beginning of civilization or earlier.

Agred. It is an important distinction.

Re: Bitcoin has few attributes of money but all the attributes of a collectible

#94

Post by rapsey » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 6:02 AM UTC

rawtxapp wrote: post #62

fny wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a question: how many people do you know that buy crypto intend to spend it? You know, use it like currency? Or are they all just HODLing in the hopes that some other buyer will come along who believes it will become a medium of exchange? In my view, it's not a currency until people stop speculating and start using it like a currency. So yes, it's a collectible with ridiculously high transaction costs that make…

Personally, I'll start spending it when it's value stabilizes and that won't happen until it either "wins" as in becomes the global reserve currency or "loses" as in becomes worthless. If it were to freeze at it's current price, it would only be able to power a very small economy of 1T$, that's nothing considering it's borderless and digital.

So you will never spend it. What gives currencies relative stability is central banks.

It will never become a global reserve currency for the same reason gold is no longer a basis for money. It is better to inflate your way out of problems (print money to bail out key institutions) than to deflate your way out of them (great depression). Better is defined as causing less harm to individuals.

Re: Bitcoin has few attributes of money but all the attributes of a collectible

#95

Post by matheusmoreira » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 6:04 AM UTC

cyphertruck wrote: post #88

matheusmoreira wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they are not fungable and bitcoin is Bitcoin is not fungible. Bitcoins can be distinguished by their transaction history. Governments are blacklisting addresses and all bitcoins that have passed through them are now tainted. Exchanges already reject deposits containing coins tainted by association with blacklisted individuals or even coin mixing services.

Blacklisting doesn’t change fungibility. It just means some exchanges are refusing to do business with people who believe in privacy. A government can scream and shout but they cannot block a bitcoin transaction.

Fungibility means coins are indistinguishable from each other. Bitcoin does not have this property: the origin of each coin can be traced all the way back to its minting.

Governments cannot block transactions but they can stop people from accepting the coins. Money that can't be spent is worthless.

Re: Bitcoin has few attributes of money but all the attributes of a collectible

#96

Post by cyphertruck » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 6:04 AM UTC

mrpopo wrote: post #81

cyphertruck wrote: post #65

This article is knocking down a squadron of strawmen. First off, bitcoins key attribute is not “privacy” but censorship resistance. It’s why wikileaks has been able to keep operating all these years after being cancelled by the mainstream payments industry. Not to mention many smaller, politically oppressed activist organizations, and much of the marijuana industry. Secondly, the attributes of money are, according to…

> I understand, certain people really hate bitcoin— and fir good reason. Bitcoin will eventually obsolete the fiat inflation system which has created all the wealth inequality in much of the world. The system that lets politicians buy power and escape responsibility for violating rights. What part of Bitcoin abolishes corruption, power-grabbing and bribes? How would it fix anything you accuse the current system of? A…

When you cannot rob from the poor via inflation then it becomes harder to oppress them.

The Great Depression was caused by the government making gold illegal, effectively confiscating the nations wealth and replacing it with massive fiat inflation. It was a period of monetary inflation that caused and economic contraction.

One if the ways inflation is used to indoctrinate people against their best interests is demonizing “deflation” by conflating it with the contraction in the Great Depression.

A grandma on fixed income shouldn’t have her prices go up %30 because politicians wanted to spend trillions to pay off bribes, as we have seen in the past year, where our monetary base was increased by $7T (or more) with only a fraction going to benefit Americans.

There is nothing yet discovered that can replace proof of work. There are a lot if people selling scams who think proof if work is a weakness, but they are always centralized (ethereum, dash) or PoW masquerading as something else, or simply not a cryptocurrency (ripple).

Re: Bitcoin has few attributes of money but all the attributes of a collectible

#97

Post by brbsix » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 6:04 AM UTC

beefield wrote: post #58

brbsix wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you own 2 BTC, there aren't specific Bitcoins that are marked for you. If you mine 2 BTC, you posses the private keys to two very specific BTC (unspent outputs) on the blockchain. No one else may spend them without the private keys. If you own 2 BTC in an exchange then it is true that you are unlikely to own any specific 2 BTC but that's an entirely different subject. At that point you don't really own them.

Out of curiosity, as I do not know enough details: 1. Alice owns one BTC 2. Bob owns one BTC 3. Both send their BTC to Charlie 4. Charlie sends one BTC to David Question: Is there unambiguous way to define whether David got the BTC originally owned by Alice or the one owned by Bob? If yes, how? If no, doesn't that mean that there exist no specific bitcoins anywhere?

Yes, absolutely. I'm not sure why I have been downvoted for this, as I haven't exactly said anything revelatory.

However I just want to give an obligatory caution that this is a very contrived answer. In the real world it can be difficult, there are typically many inputs and outputs to a transaction (and we are rarely able to associate names with addresses). There exists an entire field devoted to this called blockchain analysis or chainanalysis.

You can see for yourself. Choose any address on the BTC blockchain. See the transactions it has been involved in. You can inspect inputs and outputs. Here is an example: https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/1CUTyyxgbKvtCdoYmceQJ...

Re: Bitcoin has few attributes of money but all the attributes of a collectible

#98

Post by DubiousPusher » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 6:06 AM UTC

hnhg wrote: post #79

DubiousPusher wrote: post #69

I don't know why there's an article that makes the rounds once a month analogizing bitcoin to some other thing when.. 1 bitcoin is its own thing 2 bitcoin has a clear analog in the form of gold Collectibles are a terrible analogy because 1 they are not fungable and bitcoin is 2 they are not easily converted into currency whereas bitcoin is 3 they carry novelty and bitcoin does not (cryptocurrency may carry some novel…

I'm not an expert but I keep reading that bitcoin isn't fungible. Each bitcoin has a unique ID and public provenance, and that there are other coins that are truly fungible, like Monero - am I way off the mark?

It may not be de jure fungible but for most practical purposes it is. As in, when you go to exchange it for money or something else, most people don't care about which coin you give them. In my mind this makes it de facto fungible.

Re: Bitcoin has few attributes of money but all the attributes of a collectible

#99

Post by paxys » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 6:06 AM UTC

matheusmoreira wrote: post #83

fny wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a question: how many people do you know that buy crypto intend to spend it? You know, use it like currency? Or are they all just HODLing in the hopes that some other buyer will come along who believes it will become a medium of exchange? In my view, it's not a currency until people stop speculating and start using it like a currency. So yes, it's a collectible with ridiculously high transaction costs that make…

I would pay and get paid using monero. It's everything bitcoin was supposed to be.

> I would pay and get paid using monero

If you agreed to work for a company for X monero a month, and the value of monero (relative to USD or your local currency) dropped by 90% a few months later, would you continue to work at the originally agreed upon rate?

And on the opposite end, if a coffee shop sold lattes for Y monero, would you be okay with continuing to pay Y if monero shot up by 1000%?

Re: Bitcoin has few attributes of money but all the attributes of a collectible

#100

Post by rspeele » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 6:07 AM UTC

cyphertruck wrote: post #65

This article is knocking down a squadron of strawmen. First off, bitcoins key attribute is not “privacy” but censorship resistance. It’s why wikileaks has been able to keep operating all these years after being cancelled by the mainstream payments industry. Not to mention many smaller, politically oppressed activist organizations, and much of the marijuana industry. Secondly, the attributes of money are, according to…

> - immune to spoilage: bitcoin can’t dissolve in water like salt (a previous form of money) and is quite robust, and can be backed up!

I presume that in societies that used salt as money, anybody who lost it to "spoilage" was considered to be responsible for their own loss and this was not considered a downside of the salt-based economy.

Similar to throwing out a hard drive with your Bitcoin wallet on it, or sending coins to an address nobody has the private key to, or dying without telling anybody how to access your bitcoins.