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I totally agree with that part of the conclusion that says Bitcoin has failed in regards of it's "no need to trust anyone" goal. It's not a failure for us thoug

by erikb 11y ago

I totally agree with that part of the conclusion that says Bitcoin has failed in regards of it's "no need to trust anyone" goal. It's not a failure for us though. There are so many things we can learn from Bitcoin, like no matter what your technical solution is, you'll always have power bubbles (e.g., for bitcoin the power aligns around the developers and the huge farm owners), you'll always have disagreement in the community no matter how morally high your goals are.

CamperBob2 11y ago
More generally, you can rarely solve social problems with technological means alone.
- eterm 11y ago
  This really is the takeaway. Bitcoiners like to point to the remittance industry or the wider money transfer industry and say how a bitcoin future would be so much better, but they're slowly learning the hard way a lot of problems actually need solving, and the cost with bitcoin is just as high as non-bitcoin. "Solutions" start to appear which look remarkably similar to the existing industries they were trying to disrupt. For example "off chain" transactions which seem w.r.t bitcoin remarkably similar to fiat banking with respect to gold.
  - vectorpush 11y ago
    "Offchain" aka marketing speak for a standard relational database.
    - tveita 11y ago
      Not always, sometimes they use MongoDB.
- erikb 11y ago
  Yeah and in theory we all know that, right? But especially with Bitcoin I totally forgot about it, although I'm probably far less enthusiastic than most Bitcoiners (don't read much about it, only own $2 worth of Satoshis, etc). For some time I really thought Bitcoin would solve money. And that's where I think the real learning comes in, when you transfer your theoretical knowledge and see how it applies to reality.
pron 11y ago
> There are so many things we can learn from Bitcoin, like no matter what your technical solution is, you'll always have power bubbles If many of Bitcoin's believers had only been less dismissive of the social sciences, they could have known that long ago. In fact, if they had only been less dismissive of politics, they would have known that people who dismiss politics are simply people who don't know what it is, and those are the people who eventually do bad politics. Politics is a property of any social interaction and is simply influence over others (by any social means -- even technological). As an academic field of study it is the study of the flow of power (simply put -- influence) in a society.
- mike_hearn 11y ago
  I wouldn't lump all us Bitcoiners together. It was very clear right from the start that Bitcoin is just a tool that lets people rearrange and disperse power, not a magic cure-all (even though some people get rather breathless over The Blockchain™). If you look at the current dispute, it looks somewhat like what an election campaign for central bankers might look like if western countries were to allow for such things. Or rather what the first one might look like, if the current set of central bankers weren't really on board with the whole idea. You've got different groups with differing visions running something that vaguely resembles an election, but the issues are rather wonkish and technical. Undoubtably many people will look at this whole thing and say, look how much more professional the dollar or the euro is. You never see such disagreements in the Fed! But I think the social failures that are leading to this crisis are actually also present there too: an assumption that experts never disagree, a preference for opaque unanimity, and a strong mental/emotional link between (perceived) unanimity and credibility. Put another way, it's difficult to imagine a new central banker announcing that his/her predecessors and peers were all wrong and - for example - the correct inflation rate to target is 0% and not 2%. Even though there are economic papers out there that imply their policies might not be correct (written by economists at central banks, no less), the giant shitstorm that'd unleash would be extremely un-Central-Banker like and be seen as a serious threat to the credibility of that CB or even that country. Bitcoin, for all its faults, does at least have some kind of mechanism to handle the case where the people making boring technical decisions stop doing it right.
jchrisa 11y ago
Bitcoin's problem is that it pretends to be distributed when it's really decentralized. Or vise versa, depending on your definition of those terms. What I mean is that Bitcoin is a distributed way of building a global variable (the blockchain). As long as we go on thinking a global blockchain is any different from centralized banking... I'm more interested in what happens when we throw out the idea of commodity money altogether: http://thenewstack.io/why-art-could-become-currency-in-a-cryptocurrency-world/ http://thenewstack.io/why-art-could-become-currency-in-a-cry...
erikpukinskis 11y ago
I'm sorry, I don't understand. Who, in this situation, has exercised power over me, the Bitcoin user? As far as I'm aware my Bitcoins at safe and I am still able to transact them with anyone who has an Internet connection and a little time. Without interference from any governments or banks or what have you. Isn't that the Bitcoin contract? What exactly has failed here, due to a power bubble?

by erikb 11y ago

CamperBob2 11y ago

More generally, you can rarely solve social problems with technological means alone.

eterm 11y ago
This really is the takeaway. Bitcoiners like to point to the remittance industry or the wider money transfer industry and say how a bitcoin future would be so much better, but they're slowly learning the hard way a lot of problems actually need solving, and the cost with bitcoin is just as high as non-bitcoin. "Solutions" start to appear which look remarkably similar to the existing industries they were trying to disrupt. For example "off chain" transactions which seem w.r.t bitcoin remarkably similar to fiat banking with respect to gold.
- vectorpush 11y ago
  "Offchain" aka marketing speak for a standard relational database.
  - tveita 11y ago
    Not always, sometimes they use MongoDB.
erikb 11y ago
Yeah and in theory we all know that, right? But especially with Bitcoin I totally forgot about it, although I'm probably far less enthusiastic than most Bitcoiners (don't read much about it, only own $2 worth of Satoshis, etc). For some time I really thought Bitcoin would solve money. And that's where I think the real learning comes in, when you transfer your theoretical knowledge and see how it applies to reality.

pron 11y ago

> There are so many things we can learn from Bitcoin, like no matter what your technical solution is, you'll always have power bubbles If many of Bitcoin's believers had only been less dismissive of the social sciences, they could have known that long ago. In fact, if they had only been less dismissive of politics, they would have known that people who dismiss politics are simply people who don't know what it is, and those are the people who eventually do bad politics. Politics is a property of any social interaction and is simply influence over others (by any social means -- even technological). As an academic field of study it is the study of the flow of power (simply put -- influence) in a society.

mike_hearn 11y ago
I wouldn't lump all us Bitcoiners together. It was very clear right from the start that Bitcoin is just a tool that lets people rearrange and disperse power, not a magic cure-all (even though some people get rather breathless over The Blockchain™). If you look at the current dispute, it looks somewhat like what an election campaign for central bankers might look like if western countries were to allow for such things. Or rather what the first one might look like, if the current set of central bankers weren't really on board with the whole idea. You've got different groups with differing visions running something that vaguely resembles an election, but the issues are rather wonkish and technical. Undoubtably many people will look at this whole thing and say, look how much more professional the dollar or the euro is. You never see such disagreements in the Fed! But I think the social failures that are leading to this crisis are actually also present there too: an assumption that experts never disagree, a preference for opaque unanimity, and a strong mental/emotional link between (perceived) unanimity and credibility. Put another way, it's difficult to imagine a new central banker announcing that his/her predecessors and peers were all wrong and - for example - the correct inflation rate to target is 0% and not 2%. Even though there are economic papers out there that imply their policies might not be correct (written by economists at central banks, no less), the giant shitstorm that'd unleash would be extremely un-Central-Banker like and be seen as a serious threat to the credibility of that CB or even that country. Bitcoin, for all its faults, does at least have some kind of mechanism to handle the case where the people making boring technical decisions stop doing it right.

jchrisa 11y ago

Bitcoin's problem is that it pretends to be distributed when it's really decentralized. Or vise versa, depending on your definition of those terms. What I mean is that Bitcoin is a distributed way of building a global variable (the blockchain). As long as we go on thinking a global blockchain is any different from centralized banking... I'm more interested in what happens when we throw out the idea of commodity money altogether: http://thenewstack.io/why-art-could-become-currency-in-a-cryptocurrency-world/ http://thenewstack.io/why-art-could-become-currency-in-a-cry...

erikpukinskis 11y ago

I'm sorry, I don't understand. Who, in this situation, has exercised power over me, the Bitcoin user? As far as I'm aware my Bitcoins at safe and I am still able to transact them with anyone who has an Internet connection and a little time. Without interference from any governments or banks or what have you. Isn't that the Bitcoin contract? What exactly has failed here, due to a power bubble?