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My viewpoint is that things like Bitcoin are little more than cryptographically engineered Monopoly Money. That said, I do believe that eventually, paper money

My viewpoint is that things like Bitcoin are little more than cryptographically engineered Monopoly Money. That said, I do believe that eventually, paper money will go away (if for no other reason than to track every purpose for government surveillance).

gnaritas 11y ago
> My viewpoint is that things like Bitcoin are little more than cryptographically engineered Monopoly Money. Exactly like USD and all other first world currencies. Bitcoin is simply the next step in money.
- rhino369 11y ago
  It's not a next step because the US dollar is monopoly money forced on you by the government. Also it's supply is controlled to keep the value steady. Bitcoin has nobody forcing you into using it and nobody controls the price. Bitcoins are just bits on a ledger that maybe someone will buy from you tomorrow, maybe. Even in the niche roles where bitcoin is superior to bank accounts, credit cards, and cash, there is nothing beyond momentum keeping people from switching to another type of cyptocurrency. That's why it's monopoly money.
  - empath75 11y ago
    I wouldn't discount network effects. I think a lot of people are going to build more and more services on top of the bitcoin blockchain rather than creating their own blockchain, just because it's convenient in terms of adoption and development and so on. And once those services are there, it's going to be hard to migrate them off. And that will eventually create some sustainable value to the coins. As to what that value will be, I have no fucking idea. I don't imagine that it will be a major currency. But it'll always have some use cases, imo. I mean your argument is essentially like saying: TCP/IP is just a protocol and anybody can switch to a different protocol any time. Well, sure. But they haven't. And they won't unless it breaks completely.
    - rhino369 11y ago
      Switching from bitcoin to litecoin seems trivial. I don't think the networking effects are that strong for bitcoin, especially since the current number of big users is pretty small. It seems like 99% of businesses who actually accept it are just using a payment processor, which could migrate to a new system overnight. You can point to TCP/IP, but we've seen other protocols come and go. Back in the late 90/early 2000s's AOL messenger was dominate. Now nobody uses it. And that had very strong network effects, it was a messenger system.
  - gnaritas 11y ago
    > there is nothing beyond momentum keeping people from switching to another type of cyptocurrency. That's why it's monopoly money. That statement demonstrates you don't understand cyptocurrency at all. You're absolutely wrong, the difference between them is security, and that's something people value. And no, you can't trivially just substitute another crypto in place of bitcoin, other cryptos have neither the liquidity nor the security (which comes from the size of the network) to effectively move around the amount of money bitcoin can move around. > I don't think the networking effects are that strong for bitcoin Which means flatly you don't understand how cryptos work; no one who does would make that statement.
- Frondo 11y ago
  It's not the next step because it's anti-democratic. It's a step away from democratic government engagement in the money of a country. Bitcoin encodes a lot of economic assumptions and values into its design, but there's no practical way for the people affected by those decisions to work to change them, unlike money backed by a democratic government. I don't need to know how to code to vote in the regular elections that decide how the Fed operates, all I need is to be a registered voter. The next thing after USD and other first world currencies will be something that gives more power to the people, not less.
  - gnaritas 11y ago
    > It's not the next step because it's anti-democratic. As that statement is wrong, so is everything else that follows. Democracy is built into the protocol, it is the very core of how bitcoin works.
    - Frondo 11y ago
      Bitcoin is absolutely anti-democratic. There's no way for users to engage with the policy decisions implied in the design. No bitcoin advocate has ever said anything about my point other than "Just code up your alternative and get 50% of the network to adopt it," which does not mesh with any definition of democratic engagement anywhere in history, and doesn't even make sense in the context of democratic governance. I'll just note that you didn't even say that, you just said "yes it is! yes it is so democratic!" ... which, of course, it isn't, at all.
      - gnaritas 11y ago
        Bitcoin is a consensus network, to call that anti-democratic is just absolutely absurd. It is the very definition of a simple democracy, whoever controls 51% of the network wins. > Just code up your alternative and get 50% of the network to adopt it," which does not mesh with any definition of democratic engagement anywhere in history Nonsense, winning in any democracy requires gaining the support of the majority. If your idea has merit, it'll be adopted when the majority of of the network agrees it has merit by adopting it.
api 11y ago
I deliberately said cryptocurrency not Bitcoin, since I view Bitcoin as an alpha version of distributed digital money.
marcell 11y ago
Tongue in cheek: I believe this attitude proves grand parent. Of course, only if Bitcoin actually succeeds :)
adrianmacneil 11y ago
This viewpoint comes up a lot on HN, but it's missing the point. Don't think about bitcoin as an alternate currency, think of of it as a distributed protocol, like TCP/IP or bittorrent, which supports arbitrary value transfer. The media tends to focus a lot on the price of bitcoin, but in the long run the price is irrelevant.

gnaritas 11y ago

> My viewpoint is that things like Bitcoin are little more than cryptographically engineered Monopoly Money. Exactly like USD and all other first world currencies. Bitcoin is simply the next step in money.

rhino369 11y ago
It's not a next step because the US dollar is monopoly money forced on you by the government. Also it's supply is controlled to keep the value steady. Bitcoin has nobody forcing you into using it and nobody controls the price. Bitcoins are just bits on a ledger that maybe someone will buy from you tomorrow, maybe. Even in the niche roles where bitcoin is superior to bank accounts, credit cards, and cash, there is nothing beyond momentum keeping people from switching to another type of cyptocurrency. That's why it's monopoly money.
- empath75 11y ago
  I wouldn't discount network effects. I think a lot of people are going to build more and more services on top of the bitcoin blockchain rather than creating their own blockchain, just because it's convenient in terms of adoption and development and so on. And once those services are there, it's going to be hard to migrate them off. And that will eventually create some sustainable value to the coins. As to what that value will be, I have no fucking idea. I don't imagine that it will be a major currency. But it'll always have some use cases, imo. I mean your argument is essentially like saying: TCP/IP is just a protocol and anybody can switch to a different protocol any time. Well, sure. But they haven't. And they won't unless it breaks completely.
  - rhino369 11y ago
    Switching from bitcoin to litecoin seems trivial. I don't think the networking effects are that strong for bitcoin, especially since the current number of big users is pretty small. It seems like 99% of businesses who actually accept it are just using a payment processor, which could migrate to a new system overnight. You can point to TCP/IP, but we've seen other protocols come and go. Back in the late 90/early 2000s's AOL messenger was dominate. Now nobody uses it. And that had very strong network effects, it was a messenger system.
- gnaritas 11y ago
  > there is nothing beyond momentum keeping people from switching to another type of cyptocurrency. That's why it's monopoly money. That statement demonstrates you don't understand cyptocurrency at all. You're absolutely wrong, the difference between them is security, and that's something people value. And no, you can't trivially just substitute another crypto in place of bitcoin, other cryptos have neither the liquidity nor the security (which comes from the size of the network) to effectively move around the amount of money bitcoin can move around. > I don't think the networking effects are that strong for bitcoin Which means flatly you don't understand how cryptos work; no one who does would make that statement.
Frondo 11y ago
It's not the next step because it's anti-democratic. It's a step away from democratic government engagement in the money of a country. Bitcoin encodes a lot of economic assumptions and values into its design, but there's no practical way for the people affected by those decisions to work to change them, unlike money backed by a democratic government. I don't need to know how to code to vote in the regular elections that decide how the Fed operates, all I need is to be a registered voter. The next thing after USD and other first world currencies will be something that gives more power to the people, not less.
- gnaritas 11y ago
  > It's not the next step because it's anti-democratic. As that statement is wrong, so is everything else that follows. Democracy is built into the protocol, it is the very core of how bitcoin works.
  - Frondo 11y ago
    Bitcoin is absolutely anti-democratic. There's no way for users to engage with the policy decisions implied in the design. No bitcoin advocate has ever said anything about my point other than "Just code up your alternative and get 50% of the network to adopt it," which does not mesh with any definition of democratic engagement anywhere in history, and doesn't even make sense in the context of democratic governance. I'll just note that you didn't even say that, you just said "yes it is! yes it is so democratic!" ... which, of course, it isn't, at all.
    - gnaritas 11y ago
      Bitcoin is a consensus network, to call that anti-democratic is just absolutely absurd. It is the very definition of a simple democracy, whoever controls 51% of the network wins. > Just code up your alternative and get 50% of the network to adopt it," which does not mesh with any definition of democratic engagement anywhere in history Nonsense, winning in any democracy requires gaining the support of the majority. If your idea has merit, it'll be adopted when the majority of of the network agrees it has merit by adopting it.

api 11y ago

I deliberately said cryptocurrency not Bitcoin, since I view Bitcoin as an alpha version of distributed digital money.

marcell 11y ago

Tongue in cheek: I believe this attitude proves grand parent. Of course, only if Bitcoin actually succeeds :)

adrianmacneil 11y ago

This viewpoint comes up a lot on HN, but it's missing the point. Don't think about bitcoin as an alternate currency, think of of it as a distributed protocol, like TCP/IP or bittorrent, which supports arbitrary value transfer. The media tends to focus a lot on the price of bitcoin, but in the long run the price is irrelevant.