Why Bitcoin is a significant breakthrough, but perhaps not as a currency
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Re: Why Bitcoin is a significant breakthrough, but perhaps not as a currency
#2I think we almost all agree that cryptocurrency is a revolutionary thing. It's difficult to see how revolutionary, because we are only beginning to understand what can be made possible by it.
I often see it compared to the advent of the early Internet in the 1980s, when nobody really knew how big it would get, just that it was "revolutionary" and would become huge.
This may be an overestimation caused in part by bitcoin stakeholders trying to promote the idea. But a very similar thing happened in the 90s when everyone was buying tech stocks.
Re: Why Bitcoin is a significant breakthrough, but perhaps not as a currency
#3Naive question from total outsider to both contexts, popped up while reading this: has there been any speculation that Aaron Swartz = Satoshi Nakamoto, or are there good reasons to exclude it?
Re: Why Bitcoin is a significant breakthrough, but perhaps not as a currency
#4This article misses the true breakthrough which bitcoin represents which is a trustless, decentralised store and exchange of value.
Re: Why Bitcoin is a significant breakthrough, but perhaps not as a currency
#5I think we almost all agree that cryptocurrency is a revolutionary thing. It's difficult to see how revolutionary, because we are only beginning to understand what can be made possible by it. I often see it compared to the advent of the early Internet in the 1980s, when nobody really knew how big it would get, just that it was "revolutionary" and would become huge. This may be an overestimation caused in part by bitc…
The difference between the 1980s and now is that people now can use the Internet to learn about Bitcoin for themselves, from the source, instead of basing all they know on hype. It's a shame that so many people seem to love to talk more than they learn.
Re: Why Bitcoin is a significant breakthrough, but perhaps not as a currency
#6I think we almost all agree that cryptocurrency is a revolutionary thing. It's difficult to see how revolutionary, because we are only beginning to understand what can be made possible by it. I often see it compared to the advent of the early Internet in the 1980s, when nobody really knew how big it would get, just that it was "revolutionary" and would become huge. This may be an overestimation caused in part by bitc…
The difference between the 1980s and now is that people now can use the Internet to learn about Bitcoin for themselves, from the source, instead of basing all they know on hype. It's a shame that so many people seem to love to talk more than they learn.
Yeah, that difference definitely exists now, and accelerates the learning process quite a bit.
I think most people don't generally go to the source when learning about something, though, even today when it's easily possible. Usually what people do is learn what is fed to them from whatever outlets they prefer (TV, news websites, reddit, etc.) and hear about stuff in passing.
Re: Why Bitcoin is a significant breakthrough, but perhaps not as a currency
#7I think this article is on to something really important. It is way too easy currently to get caught up in the frenzy over the specuation surrounding Bitcoin.
This idea of the Bitcoin protocol as a decentralized, secure, and transparent storage system has all kinds of applications, whether Namecoin, smart property or something else.
I played around with using Namecoin as a more consumer-friendly form of drm.
Re: Why Bitcoin is a significant breakthrough, but perhaps not as a currency
#8This article misses the true breakthrough which bitcoin represents which is a trustless , decentralised store and exchange of value.
I'd say "less trusting" than "trust less."
You still have to trust SHA-256 and that no one can afford to do a 51% attack, for instance.
Re: Why Bitcoin is a significant breakthrough, but perhaps not as a currency
#9Naive question from total outsider to both contexts, popped up while reading this: has there been any speculation that Aaron Swartz = Satoshi Nakamoto, or are there good reasons to exclude it?
Vanishingly unlikely. Very different politics and economics. (Swartz: very Krugmanesque in views.) Even considering the referenced Swartz write-up after thinking about Bitcoin...
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/squarezooko
...you can see his thoughts were more focused on censorship-resistance (a major interest of Swartz) than on stateless money.
Re: Why Bitcoin is a significant breakthrough, but perhaps not as a currency
#10This article misses the true breakthrough which bitcoin represents which is a trustless , decentralised store and exchange of value.
On that note, I want to point people to Protoshares and the concept of DACs (Decentralized Autonomous Corporations):
http://letstalkbitcoin.com/bitcoin-and-the-three-laws-of-rob...
http://letstalkbitcoin.com/dacs-that-spawn-dacs/
The use of the word "corporation" is kind of wonky to me and the whole concept took me a little time to wrap my head around it, but these are the types of things we can expect to see with blockchain technology and hopefully IMO eventually the abolition of states worldwide.