4 ms·

People have been saying since it was valued at $1 that it was overvalued, or nobody should pay $1 for a virtual coin. Same people are still arguing the same thi

People have been saying since it was valued at $1 that it was overvalued, or nobody should pay $1 for a virtual coin. Same people are still arguing the same thing 5 years later...

theklub 9y ago
And now fewer and fewer can afford a whole coin.
- fish_fan 9y ago
  Sure, but thankfully you don't need a whole coin for most transactions. It's not an inherently meaningful thing.
  - CamelCaseName 9y ago
    But it is a psychologically important thing, and Bitcoin price has always been psychologically driven.
- dwaltrip 9y ago
  Each bitcoin can be divided into 100 million atomic units called "satoshis". 1 BTC is just a particular denomination, in the same way that $20 and $100 bills are denominations in use for USD. 1 BTC is a historically common denomination that will likely receive less usage if the price continues to rise.
MBCook 9y ago
Doesn't make them wrong. I find the idea of crypto currency, especially bitcoin, very interesting. I just have a very hard time seeing how it's actually useful. It can't handle very many transactions per minute. And the thing that supposed to make it so great is that no one controls it. But if bitcoin becomes really important then people will want to control a lot of the mining power. Pretty soon you end up with a group of miners (or even a single miner) having enough power to influence things leaving you pretty close to someone being in charge of the thing. It's such a fascinating idea. But in less there was someway to limit mining so people couldn't throw additional power at it I'm not sure it's useful. As an example, you could use a block chain to enforce a ledger between a couple of different companies but you'd have to have some sort of contract it said everyone was only allowed to use one of device X for mining. That way everyone would be equal and you could easily check it because the blocks should be minded roughly evenly. But when miners can buy additional mining capacity, and they get rewarded for doing that with more money, how does this not end up with a winner takes all situation?
- solotronics 9y ago
  why is it useful? you can store and instantly send any arbitrary amount of money anywhere on the planet and it is the hardest (impossible?) for a government to steal it from you
  - harryh 9y ago
    https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/
  - nosuchthing 9y ago
    Correction: you can store and send any arbitrary amount of database entries and wait for several minutes while your transaction is processed
  - MBCook 9y ago
    I can send money around the world with it. You can too. Will it hold up when 10 million people want to do that per day? 100 million? Half 1 billion? I know it can work at niche scales (relative to total global financial transactions) but can it actually be scaled up to be a real player? Even if the block size was massively larger, say 100 MB, would enough transactions be able to be broadcasted around fast enough to be able to be collected in giant blocks to keep up with demand? As to hardest/impossible for a government to steal from you: this is the mining pool problem. What if China decided to do something about all of the mining pools they have in their country and try and manipulate bitcoin? What if in addition to the pools that they could get/force to cooperate they added a bunch more miners with government computers? What if the US government just decided to throw computer power at trying to make the dominant hashrate mining pool? I'm guessing there are number of governments in the world it would be capable of doing that TODAY. They could certainly do it if they cooperated. Even if they can't take over they could throw enough uncertainty into the process to cause the price to crash. If they all competed against each other we could end up in a situation where even know if theoretically no one controls bit coin realistically it's controlled by a bunch of giant governments and no one else is capable of competing. Oops, that sort of like the current banking system. Like I said it's a fascinating idea, but I don't think it works at planet scale or if people can independently buy additional hashing capacity. It seems like it would have to have some sort of agreement to limit everyone to be roughly equal for it to work out almost anywhere. I'd love to see history prove me wrong. I don't remember seening a solution to the problems that worry me yet. If they exist I'm not smart enough to think of them. We'll see what happens.

People have been saying since it was valued at $1 that it was overvalued, or nobody should pay $1 for a virtual coin. Same people are still arguing the same thing 5 years later...

theklub 9y ago

And now fewer and fewer can afford a whole coin.

fish_fan 9y ago
Sure, but thankfully you don't need a whole coin for most transactions. It's not an inherently meaningful thing.
- CamelCaseName 9y ago
  But it is a psychologically important thing, and Bitcoin price has always been psychologically driven.
dwaltrip 9y ago
Each bitcoin can be divided into 100 million atomic units called "satoshis". 1 BTC is just a particular denomination, in the same way that $20 and $100 bills are denominations in use for USD. 1 BTC is a historically common denomination that will likely receive less usage if the price continues to rise.

MBCook 9y ago

Doesn't make them wrong. I find the idea of crypto currency, especially bitcoin, very interesting. I just have a very hard time seeing how it's actually useful. It can't handle very many transactions per minute. And the thing that supposed to make it so great is that no one controls it. But if bitcoin becomes really important then people will want to control a lot of the mining power. Pretty soon you end up with a group of miners (or even a single miner) having enough power to influence things leaving you pretty close to someone being in charge of the thing. It's such a fascinating idea. But in less there was someway to limit mining so people couldn't throw additional power at it I'm not sure it's useful. As an example, you could use a block chain to enforce a ledger between a couple of different companies but you'd have to have some sort of contract it said everyone was only allowed to use one of device X for mining. That way everyone would be equal and you could easily check it because the blocks should be minded roughly evenly. But when miners can buy additional mining capacity, and they get rewarded for doing that with more money, how does this not end up with a winner takes all situation?

solotronics 9y ago
why is it useful? you can store and instantly send any arbitrary amount of money anywhere on the planet and it is the hardest (impossible?) for a government to steal it from you
- harryh 9y ago
  https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/
- nosuchthing 9y ago
  Correction: you can store and send any arbitrary amount of database entries and wait for several minutes while your transaction is processed
- MBCook 9y ago
  I can send money around the world with it. You can too. Will it hold up when 10 million people want to do that per day? 100 million? Half 1 billion? I know it can work at niche scales (relative to total global financial transactions) but can it actually be scaled up to be a real player? Even if the block size was massively larger, say 100 MB, would enough transactions be able to be broadcasted around fast enough to be able to be collected in giant blocks to keep up with demand? As to hardest/impossible for a government to steal from you: this is the mining pool problem. What if China decided to do something about all of the mining pools they have in their country and try and manipulate bitcoin? What if in addition to the pools that they could get/force to cooperate they added a bunch more miners with government computers? What if the US government just decided to throw computer power at trying to make the dominant hashrate mining pool? I'm guessing there are number of governments in the world it would be capable of doing that TODAY. They could certainly do it if they cooperated. Even if they can't take over they could throw enough uncertainty into the process to cause the price to crash. If they all competed against each other we could end up in a situation where even know if theoretically no one controls bit coin realistically it's controlled by a bunch of giant governments and no one else is capable of competing. Oops, that sort of like the current banking system. Like I said it's a fascinating idea, but I don't think it works at planet scale or if people can independently buy additional hashing capacity. It seems like it would have to have some sort of agreement to limit everyone to be roughly equal for it to work out almost anywhere. I'd love to see history prove me wrong. I don't remember seening a solution to the problems that worry me yet. If they exist I'm not smart enough to think of them. We'll see what happens.