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Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

186 points by imartin2k 9y ago

phasecode 9y ago
Why does it seem like more and more sites are requesting permissions to send notifications...makes it hard to consider this a "trustworthy" site when the first thing you're trying to do is ask for permissions to send notifications.
- tobyhinloopen 9y ago
  Yeah I never accept that. Who would?
  - reificator 9y ago
    There are lots of reasons to accept that request. Visiting the page for the first time and immediately getting a popup is not one of them.
  - pvdebbe 9y ago
    I don't even know what it means for a website to send a notification. Does it mean a flashing tab in firefox?
    - scarlac 9y ago
      Depends on your OS. For Chrome on macOS, it'll show a chrome-styled square box with an icon and a piece of text in the upper right hand corner, kinda like macOS notifications (but they look nothing like it). In general, web notifications (can) work the same way they do on your smart phone. They can arrive from an active tab as well as from a background service. Safari (on macOS) will use the native macOS notification system to display notifications AFAIR. I have no idea what IE on Windows does.
      - suprfnk 9y ago
        > I have no idea wat IE on Windows does. https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2016/05/16/web-notifications-microsoft-edge/ https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2016/05/16/web-notificat...
      - matt-attack 9y ago
        But in either case the browser has to be running I’m assuming? Seems kinda flawed.
        spoiler 9y ago
        JS service workers allow a JavaScript thread to run in the background while the browser chrome (the window) is closed. So, in theory, the browser doesn't need to be open. Also, notifications can be useful with an open browser too (or, multiple tabs with a tab in the background for example)
        rowyourboat 9y ago
        That depends on the browser implementation. The protocol does not require the user to have the site open.
    - pja 9y ago
      On ChromeOS & on Windows with the Edge browser it integrates with the OS notification system. Not sure what Firefox does.
  - aedron 9y ago
    It's a poor design where a site is allowed to throw up a dialog like that (also goes for the "this site wants to know your location! yes/no"). It should work like the popup blocker, just show a red cross somewhere, that some action was blocked, and if the user wants to, he can go and unblock it. The onus should be on the site owner to tell his user "if you want this additional functionality, please go and enable <this or that>".
    - Nullabillity 9y ago
      Please, no. That would just end up with each site having their own annoying modal, instead of having a single place to block all of them.
- Tepix 9y ago
  Same with apps on iOS. Smart apps ask the user before they request permission from the OS.
- buro9 9y ago
  That just caused me to block all notifications for all sites. Use Chrome? Then the settings are here: chrome://settings/content/notifications
- akvadrako 9y ago
  It was nice when it was used sparingly by things like chat apps, but it's become too annoying; maybe the webmasters just don't understand they aren't the centre of their users' lives. At least the latest version of Safari supports blocking all these requests.
- Strom 9y ago
  I've noticed this trend as well, and it's accelerating fast. It's an unsolicited popup asking premission to send more popups. Thus I decided to completely turn off the notifications feature in my Chrome.
aorth 9y ago
Original is behind a paywall on Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoins-wild-ride-shows-the-truth-it-is-probably-worth-zero-1505760623 https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoins-wild-ride-shows-the-tr...
- cottsak 9y ago
  and some kind of page bug that hangs my Chrome tab
  - cottsak 9y ago
    or was that my ad blocker.. ?
    - Roshie5u 9y ago
      Yeah, I recently saw anti-adblock script trying to look like a browser error and I totally fell for it. Only i didn't read the message and after few F5 i just closed the tab.
- Rokco 9y ago
  This post is a list of 166 articles about bitcoin dying, that's just the first in the list.
mirimir 9y ago
That's a great compilation. Definitely worth a bookmark.
Laforet 9y ago
And what is the point? Does the price prove that bitcoin has not failed? To me, bitcoin died sometime in 2013 when mining became hopelessly centralised, breaking the economic and security models Satoshi had set forth. The bitcoin thereafter has been a soulness Frankenstein animated by a mixture of ego, greed, and hubris. I don't want to make any predictions, but when the crash comes it will be over before you knew it. As for the wider field of blockchain/DLT, it bears an uncanny parallel to the early days of nuclear physics when radioactivity was first discovered by the Curies: The science behind it was be sound, yet any benefit to mankind was overshadowed by the cottage industry selling radioactive snake oil for a long time before the mania died down. And people died when basic precautious were not taken. It may work down the road and it may not, but right now all I see is woo in every direction.
- colordrops 9y ago
  Do you understand the Bitcoin security model? It has not been broken. And do you understand what "woo" means? Your hand wavey proclamations about Bitcoin fit the bill.
  - madshiva 9y ago
    A good model would not allow wallet attack...
    - nikcub 9y ago
      Wallets aren't part of Bitcoin - they're an implementation abstraction. The blockchain gives you unspent transaction outputs and a way to verify them and sign a script to unlock them. The key management involved in a Bitcoin wallet faces the same problems and complications as any other implementation of crypto and user key management faces. Some have implemented it well, some have implemented it poorly.
- Freak_NL 9y ago
  Trying to learn something about blockchain: the technology and its applications right now, means wading through masses of hype and parties anxious to 'get into it' before it's 'too late'. In healthcare IT the blockchain is hot right now. Government bureaus are pushing for adoption, care institute executives heard somewhere that this blockchain thing is the bee's knees and well suited for healthcare stuff like insurance mutations, and IT vendors are worried someone else will beat them to it. Is it a useful technology? Probably. But right now for many the blockchain is the goal, not the solution to any specific problem.
harwoodleon 9y ago
A balanced view is that all the articles hold some substance. But the technology is more at threat through its own community than any external force. One question that I don't really understand is how can the total supply of BTC serve its own growth. If the market cap reaches the same value as gold for example - how long before one Satoshi becomes too large a divisible unit to be useful? Can you divide Satoshi?
- colordrops 9y ago
  With a hard fork you can, yes.
- lokedhs 9y ago
  Isn't the greater problem that the total market cap of bitcoin is always going to be 22 million? In other words, the single bitcoin I own will always be worth 1/22M of the entire market cap, regardless of how much it's used. And I only own one. There are lost of people out there who owns thousands of bitcoins. 1000 bitcoins is 1/22k of the entire market cap. How could this be sustainable?
  - zdkl 9y ago
    I don't understand how the issue you're describing is specific to bitcoin. Consider that wealth in the real world also accumulates in a non gaussian distribution.
    - Nition 9y ago
      I think the comment is saying that in other currencies, if your currency's total value increases, usually more money is printed to keep the value reasonable. Even with other cryptocurrencies, Ripple for instance has a large unallocated holding of coins that they're meant to siphon out into the market to keep the value per coin under control. Whereas with bitcoin you can hold onto the same amount of money and if more and more people buy in, it becomes more and more valuable. I'd add that I almost feel like there could be a bit of a paradox there in regards to Bitcoin's actual usefulness for real purchases. Let’s say Bitcoin takes off and various merchants start accepting it. Since Bitcoin is useful now, more people buy in. But since more people are always buying in and the total pool is limited, the value continues to go up. The more merchants support Bitcoin, the more people adopt Bitcoin, and the more valuable it becomes. The more the value continues to increase, the better it seems as an investment, and the more people lean towards holding instead of spending. The more useful it becomes, the better it is to not spend it.
dmitriid 9y ago
In any other world a change of 30-40% per day in any direction would be a cause of concern. Bitcoin enjoys a reality distortion field that keeps it inflated beyond any reason. It's not that different from any other coin on these lists: http://deadcoins.com http://deadcoins.com, https://magoo.github.io/Blockchain-Graveyard/ https://magoo.github.io/Blockchain-Graveyard/
- fsniper 9y ago
  In what sense this lists, and bitcoin are different from these? https://trader2trader.co/2012/11/28/list-of-590-dead-currencies-demonetized-r-i-p/ https://trader2trader.co/2012/11/28/list-of-590-dead-currenc...
  - dmitriid 9y ago
    I'd say they are more similar to the Guano Era[1]. A highly sought-after resource which becomes irrelevant once better/cheaper alternatives are found. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guano_Era https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guano_Era
  - notahacker 9y ago
    Well for a start half those dead currencies were replaced with new currencies issued by a different authority and their holders compensated, often at parity. As for the ones that collapsed, they tended to involve dictators and wars rather than people simply deciding they weren't worth wasting time on because nobody was interested in exchanging them.
    - cesarb 9y ago
      > Well for a start half those dead currencies were replaced with new currencies issued by a different authority and their holders compensated, often at parity. Indeed, I see on that list the several Brazilian Cruzeiro/Cruzado currencies. The only difference between each of these and their predecessor is that three zeros were cut: if you had 1000 of the old currency, you had 1 of the new currency. The last of these was replaced by the current currency (Real) at a slightly different rate (2750 instead of 1000). That is, it was more like a renaming than the currency actually dying and being replaced. And there was no different authority in these cases, they were all issued by the same central bank.
firefoxd 9y ago
I think bitcoin is a lot like Snapchat. A lot of people dismiss it because it doesn't make total sense. But those who do, are trying to work with it. Yes, it may die next week. But next week may also bring another reason to stick with it. Even if it dies, we already had a taste of it, what are we gonna do? Not try again?
- 0xFluegel 9y ago
  Well... We made it to the moon once - and then decided that it's not neccessary to do it again... /s
steeleduncan 9y ago
One of the early obituaries on that list mentions that the finite supply of bitcoins, combined with lost crypto keys and hoarding will eventually lead to a situation where there aren't enough coins for it to be a viable currency. Clearly, in that situation you can subdivide coins as far as required, so it isn't a risk to bitcoin as such. However, I have often wondered if there is any estimate of the "effective supply", that is to say ("minted coins" - "coins where the private key is lost")?
- nkkollaw 9y ago
  I bet a lot of people lose their private key, but I bet that if there's anything in your wallet you'll be careful. So, there are probably a lot of private keys that get lost, but not a lot of bitcoins.
  - steeleduncan 9y ago
    Pragmatically, that is probably true, and bitcoin won't last for millenia either (e.g. if sha-256 has a weakness, or quantum computers render ecdsa useless). Nevertherless, there is >0 probability of multiple harddrive failure, or much greater probability of incompetence, so there must be some rate of loss of bitcoins over time, and i'd be interested to know what that is. I think it is interesting because once the speculation dies down, the market will set the fiat price of bitcoins according to the actual supply and demand, so this attrition has a real affect. For example, imagine if the coins believed to belong to Satoshi (1 million coins out of the current 16.5 million) were to move. The mere knowledge that they can be moved would increase the effective supply by 6-7% overnight, the effect could be dramatic.
  - klez 9y ago
    Well, if you lost the private key at the beginning, when they weren't worth much, you wouldn't have been that careful. So I'd wager that there is a fair amount of lost coins around.
jlebrech 9y ago
I wish it went down to $80 again so I can invest. really missed the boat.
- drcross 9y ago
  These line of thinking is toxic. What have you done in the meantime? Will you be back in 4 years when bitcoin is in the 6 figures region moaning how you should have bought at 4000?
  - nolok 9y ago
    That exact same reasoning was used to buy overpriced tulip bulbs. So I don't see how your line of thinking isn't at least as toxic as his.
- kabes 9y ago
  You can still buy $80 worth of BTC and you'd have the same chances you had 3 years ago.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
mirimir 9y ago
I've followed digital currencies for many years. As I recall, there were two libertarian threads that culminated in Bitcoin. One focused on evils of fiat currencies and central banking. The other focused on rights to private commerce, without state interference. And the potential to starve states, by making taxation impossible. Bitcoin handles both pretty well, in my experience. Except for the transaction-scaling problems, anyway. Price fluctuations just reflect its miniscule capitalization, and movements of capricious investors. When Bitcoin, or more likely, one of its descendants, reaches fiat-currency scale, that won't be so problematic.
- lawlessone 9y ago
  Thing is, with a public ledger bitcoin is only partially private.
  - mirimir 9y ago
    The ledger is public, to avoid double spending and other stuff. But addresses and wallets can be as unlinked and anonymous as you like.
WheelsAtLarge 9y ago
The reality is that bitcoin has the first mover advantage. Any other virtual currency has a big mountain to climb to catch up to it. 100 years from now bitcoin will be around since there is no one entity that defines it and control it. What the community has shown is that they are willing to adapt to the situation. Right now bitcoin has problems but as time moves the code will be modified. What's happening now is that bitcoin is being locked into people's mind as a currency with real value. Whether one can justify it or not is irrelevant. As long as one person is willing to trade goods and services for it will survive. No one throws away a stack of money if they can help it. The community will not let bitcoin die. The mistake people make is that all the current bitcoin constraints are locked forever. I had the same idea but I finally realized that it is not true. The currency is defined by code and code can be changed. It's very hard to change since the majority of the community has to agree but its possible and people will find a way to keep it going. One way to think about bitcoin's future is to look at what software was like 40 years ago and then look at what it looks like today. There's a big difference. Bitcoin still has a long way to go before it can be defined as a mature technology. I have no doubt that what we call bitcoin now will not be what we call bit coin 40 years from now. It will evolve in to the currency and store of value people are hoping it should be. No, bitcoin is not dead.
- speedplane 9y ago
  > What's happening now is that bitcoin is being locked into people's mind as a currency with real value. I'm not certain that's true. Most of the trading in bitcoin is based on speculation that it'll rise in value, and secondly, that'll become more commonplace. Currently, it's not a useful (or usable) form of currency for the vast majority of the planet. So there's no value backing it (yet). The true test is in X many years, whether BitCoin will be used as actual currency, in which case the value will keep climbing, or whether it'll remain a speculative investment, in which case it'll crash. I learned about bitcoin when it was less than a dollar, and I'd love to invest, but it's just gambling.
  - WheelsAtLarge 9y ago
    Keep in mind that there people growing up now that will think of bitcoin as having true value. Bitcoin will not be a thing that suddenly appeared in the world as it did for us. So they will be more comfortable using it. They will just think of it as another monetary asset. The boom and bust aspect will slowly disappear. One of the problems with it is the lack of things you can buy with it. As more people get used to it as a currency the more goods that will be available for purchase. Then we'll know what the true exchange value of it will be. Right now the value is basically guessing and it's driven by greed and fear. That will change. Chase's CEO might be right that it's a bubble but that does not mean it does not have value. The reality is that we don't know its value as a monetary unit. It might go to a million or crash to 1. No one knows. As the problems with it get ironed out we'll find out. People forget that the only reason fiat currency has value is because you can always find someone that will exchange it for goods or services. It has no value on its own. It's a believe in people's mind. Bitcoin will have that same trust in time. One big advantage over fiat is that the community is world wide and it's not locked to one country. I can see a country disappearing from the world but by definition bitcoin is a world monetary unit that's slowly embedding itself into the world psychic. I truthfully believe that in less than 40 years it will as common as the dollar is now. My only fear is that the world's countries will fear it and outlaw it. That doesn't mean it will go away but might slow it down. BTW, I was a anti bitcoin guy but after a little analysis I've come around.
paxpelus 9y ago
Many people on HN are so negative in bitcoin that it seems that they are focused on the tree instead of the forest. This technology can solve the main problem human society faces and this is corruption. Human greed is what keeps bitcoin alive but this is not a bug, it is a feature.
- ship_it 9y ago
  To be honest, Bitcoin in no way does solve corruption. Actually, Bitcoin in current state can only increase corruption in society by giving a sense of anonymity. Political corruption on other hand, might be solved through it, but thats the case we are left to see.
  - knocte 9y ago
    Maybe the OP refers to corruption as two political/financial practices: QE and fractional reserve banking.
    - lawlessone 9y ago
      >QE and fractional reserve banking. Those are features.
      - knocte 9y ago
        Nope, those are the main bugs of our current system.
  - paxpelus 9y ago
    Bitcoin is not completely anonymous. The discussion is not only about Bitcoin or PoW. We found a way to do transactions that nobody can tamper with. We managed to solve a really serious problem and this is that when money is involved people get greedy and corrupt. No human being should be in a high enough position to steal money or tamper the transactions or commit fraud. It is so obvious that distributed ledgers are a solution to this and it disappoints me that the HN community cannot see it.
- 9y ago
nkkollaw 9y ago
It's almost as if writing about Bitcoin crashing sold newspapers/pageviews... Weird.
- speedplane 9y ago
  Journalists discussing BitCoin is in some ways a form of mining BitCoins.
  - nkkollaw 9y ago
    ...and undermining journalism.
vinchuco 9y ago
The sun has risen at least 166 times already, but it is not proof that the sun will rise tomorrow. My point is not to confirm or deny the bear or the bull, but to point out this is simply noise. When are market news reliable indicators of supply and demand?
- shawabawa3 9y ago
  > The sun has risen at least 166 times already, but it is not proof that the sun will rise tomorrow Not proof, but it very strongly implies it
- rythie 9y ago
  However, there is much greater than 50% chance that it will.
- cesarb 9y ago
  > The sun has risen at least 166 times already, but it is not proof that the sun will rise tomorrow. If the sun has risen at least 166 times, the probability that it will rise tomorrow is at least 99.4% according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunrise_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunrise_problem
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
ftw45 9y ago
No, it didn't die and it won't die anytime soon. But dollars, Euro's and all other physical currencies are about to die(soon). Why? Because just like the change from gold and silver coins to almost worthless nickel, this type of currency creates a whole new universe of possibilities. With nickel and paper money, banks can create as much cash as they like, it's virtual value, not real. Crypto currency is just like that, but more secure and not (yet) controlled by the banks. And again you see the allegations that crypto would be a pyramid scheme etc.. Do people notice that our actual economy/financial-system is a very proven pyramid scheme? All money flows to the rich. And especially those people in power now, are getting a little nervous seeing they might lose some control. Crypto currencies can be a boon for humanity, unless governments are going to criminalize it and only allow banks to use the technology.
- lawlessone 9y ago
  >But dollars, Euro's and all other physical currencies are about to die(soon). Yeah, your type have been saying that a long time.
- madshiva 9y ago
  No bank can't create cash like they want. There's regulation, authority. Do you know how bank work? Bitcoin and all crypto currency are not secure, a lot of people lose money stole by hacker then why arguing that is secure? because there's some math behind it? There's no conspiracy with bank or governments, only people that want to be richer and richer, because of this stupid economy. The great democraty, this is the reason, because we failed to put priority about life quality, but about making money = success Also if people stop looking for conspiracy but start to elect, vote for a more better world where everyone can own the same amount of land (that mean I have right to go to amercia without your passeport because you are not a real amercian, just a Citizen of the World), can have the same access to medecine or wathever, there's no need of money. We all are little ants.
  - bertolo1988 9y ago
    "No bank can't create cash like they want.", sadly they can. All they have to do is to lend some money.
rajadigopula 9y ago
Most analysts from traditional mindset making the mistake of analyzing bitcoin like they do stocks or fiat currency which can rely on a country's economy or political scenarios or a company's decisions to make profits. But, Bitcoin is like anything they have seen before or learnt in their college. Most volatility corresponds to news of it's survival at the moment and due to the reason the market is failing to agree with a fair value as no one knows it's future but is aware of the nobility of the technology and how it skipped the hands of any one controlling it by being decentralized. As the world keeps adopting to it the demand is getting increased. And there is still a lot of geographical terrain to cover. When a traditional wall-street analyst sees a peak, he was trained to freak out and sense it as an extreme point of the crowd's greed. And shows off his training by telling the world that it's a bubble and it's going to burst, as the peak is occupied mostly by greedy investors who panic on losing their money and sells off double the speed they entered the trade. But this stands true when the value of the instrument surpasses the intrinsic value of the asset way too high. But with bitcoin no one knows hence majority investors still think it cheap and keep piling up.
- rajadigopula 9y ago
  I think some stupid Chinese govt. bot down voted my comment.
  - dang 9y ago
    This comment breaks the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Please read them and follow them when commenting here.
geraldbauer 9y ago
My humble analysis why blockchains (and bitcoins on the blockchain) are like tulips. Like tulips you can always grow more and with blockchains you can always build / start your own blockchains. Building your own blockchain lets say in Ruby is about 20 lines of code. See the point? It's easy (not rocket sience ;-). See the [Awesome Blockchains](https://github.com/openblockchains/awesome-blockchains https://github.com/openblockchains/awesome-blockchains) for more (about building your own blockchains in Python, JavaScript, Ruby, etc.) in minutes.
- tashoecraft 9y ago
  My humble analysis why paper currencies are like tulips. Like tulips you can always grow more, and with paper currencies you can always print/start your own. Creating a paper currency on say, paper, takes only 1 minute. See the point? It's easy (not rocket science ;). My humble analysis of why startups are like tulips. Like tulips you can grow more, and with startups you can always build/start your own. Building your own startup is easy, just think of an idea, say Uber for toilet paper, and it takes only 1 minute. See the point? It's easy (not rocket science ;-). Sorry but I had too, the easiness to create something has no barring on how hard it is to make it a globally used system. Whether you can create a new blockchain in minutes is completely irrelevant and offers nothing to the discussion.
magma17 9y ago
obviously FUD to keep poor people poor.
giancarlostoro 9y ago
There's way too much for me to know it all about Bitcoin but say I want to learn more about building a blockchain, is there a spec for just that from the Bitcoin spec, or is the spec all inclusive? I have to admit I never read the original paper(s) I just mined BTC back in 2009 when I (somehow) heard about it, and have left it alone since. Funnily enough I was ignoring it all, till I realized my mining pool had all my BTC so I transfered it out (nothing significant enough, but just enough to allow me to peek curiosity again). I'm curious if anyone has designed their own Blockchain based tech that is focused on that aspect that has several industries interested in Blockchain technology. Minus any Bitcoin specifics that is.
kbody 9y ago
I am mostly commenting on a big amount of comments deeming Bitcoin a failure or similar. The Bitcoin of ~a month ago is not the same as today, that's a big power, to have upgradable decentralized money. Certainly Bitcoin is not perfect, but the good thing is that there are a lot of talented engineers working on the issues and new features, the majority of them even before Bitcoin really was worth much. But having it being valuable at the moment also acts a huge security/bug bounty and an incentive for more people work on it and make it better. = All about the price Even if the price crashes horribly, unless there's a unrecoverable catastrophe, it will keep on going because there's an ecosystem around it and clear price-independent advantages. Using Bitwage to be paid in Bitcoins and avoid crazy cross-border/currency fees of banks will be still an advantage no matter the price of bitcoin. Same goes for prepaid/debit cards backed with bitcoin. Doing commerce painlessly without crazy procedures with Africa & Latin America or wherever. Being immune to capital controls and asset seizures. = Hype I hate the hype everywhere, but it's not the tech's fault so many cluessless & irrelevant gold-diggers try to ride the wave, just with a lot of things you can just ignore. If you follow the devs, they are pragmatic and don't try to pump-up things like most altcoins do, that's something I greatly respect. Anyway, there's a long way to go, but just because there are flaws at the moment, it doesn't mean it's dead, it's a live technology. Being pragmatic is key, Bitcoin is not some Utopian perfect invention, but it's good enough for a lot of things at the moment and I see it getting better every year. Bitcoin offers true permissionless commerce and ownership of wealth and it now might not make any difference in a lot of democratic countries until it begins to do.
wruza 9y ago
I assume my question will be lost in comments, but I'll ask it anyway here, because it seems to be very interesting side of cryptocoins. My boss is somewhat educated in economy and routinely tries to model the bitcoin economics. He came to the conclusion that the amount of bitcoin turnover is supported not by regular players, but by country-sized economies like China and probably few other states. Most of capitalization comes from really, really huge amount of money, because there is not so much many money even in criminal activities like drugs, trafficking, arms, etc. Bitcoin is alive not because of blockchain mining and not because of human's freedom, but because it enables to move capitals and gray industry volumes across the borders with no usually defined penalty. If that is true, there is strict confidence that it's not going away in near future. But that also means that it is surely regulated or at least heavily monitored. Or it leads all of us to such economical crashes that world never seen (and can't just deal with). Idk where it goes and how one evaluates it, do you have any ideas on that hypothesis? The basic idea that regular people use it for freedom and security is parallel to this one, and is of no interest since the volume of it in ordinary currencies is too low to consider.
dcchambers 9y ago
Bitcoin, as it was originally envisioned, IS dead. It's not a replacement for cash. It's prohibitively expensive to use for regular transactions. It's also a colossal waste of energy. It's become similar to stocks/ETFs...something people trade/speculate on/gamble with to try and get rich. When I had bitcoin first explained to me in ~2011 I was told that it would save us all from the evil that are banks, transaction fees, and the government. Six years later, bitcoin has made a few people very, very wealthy, but us laymen still can't use it as a cash replacement and the people with decision making power in the Bitcoin community are not interested in ever letting that happen. It was a fun experiment, but it failed its primary goal.

186 points by imartin2k 9y ago

Why does it seem like more and more sites are requesting permissions to send notifications...makes it hard to consider this a "trustworthy" site when the first thing you're trying to do is ask for permissions to send notifications.

tobyhinloopen 9y ago
Yeah I never accept that. Who would?
- reificator 9y ago
  There are lots of reasons to accept that request. Visiting the page for the first time and immediately getting a popup is not one of them.
- pvdebbe 9y ago
  I don't even know what it means for a website to send a notification. Does it mean a flashing tab in firefox?
  - scarlac 9y ago
    Depends on your OS. For Chrome on macOS, it'll show a chrome-styled square box with an icon and a piece of text in the upper right hand corner, kinda like macOS notifications (but they look nothing like it). In general, web notifications (can) work the same way they do on your smart phone. They can arrive from an active tab as well as from a background service. Safari (on macOS) will use the native macOS notification system to display notifications AFAIR. I have no idea what IE on Windows does.
    - suprfnk 9y ago
      > I have no idea wat IE on Windows does. https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2016/05/16/web-notifications-microsoft-edge/ https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2016/05/16/web-notificat...
    - matt-attack 9y ago
      But in either case the browser has to be running I’m assuming? Seems kinda flawed.
      - spoiler 9y ago
        JS service workers allow a JavaScript thread to run in the background while the browser chrome (the window) is closed. So, in theory, the browser doesn't need to be open. Also, notifications can be useful with an open browser too (or, multiple tabs with a tab in the background for example)
      - rowyourboat 9y ago
        That depends on the browser implementation. The protocol does not require the user to have the site open.
  - pja 9y ago
    On ChromeOS & on Windows with the Edge browser it integrates with the OS notification system. Not sure what Firefox does.
- aedron 9y ago
  It's a poor design where a site is allowed to throw up a dialog like that (also goes for the "this site wants to know your location! yes/no"). It should work like the popup blocker, just show a red cross somewhere, that some action was blocked, and if the user wants to, he can go and unblock it. The onus should be on the site owner to tell his user "if you want this additional functionality, please go and enable <this or that>".
  - Nullabillity 9y ago
    Please, no. That would just end up with each site having their own annoying modal, instead of having a single place to block all of them.
Tepix 9y ago
Same with apps on iOS. Smart apps ask the user before they request permission from the OS.
buro9 9y ago
That just caused me to block all notifications for all sites. Use Chrome? Then the settings are here: chrome://settings/content/notifications
akvadrako 9y ago
It was nice when it was used sparingly by things like chat apps, but it's become too annoying; maybe the webmasters just don't understand they aren't the centre of their users' lives. At least the latest version of Safari supports blocking all these requests.
Strom 9y ago
I've noticed this trend as well, and it's accelerating fast. It's an unsolicited popup asking premission to send more popups. Thus I decided to completely turn off the notifications feature in my Chrome.

aorth 9y ago

Original is behind a paywall on Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoins-wild-ride-shows-the-truth-it-is-probably-worth-zero-1505760623 https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoins-wild-ride-shows-the-tr...

cottsak 9y ago
and some kind of page bug that hangs my Chrome tab
- cottsak 9y ago
  or was that my ad blocker.. ?
  - Roshie5u 9y ago
    Yeah, I recently saw anti-adblock script trying to look like a browser error and I totally fell for it. Only i didn't read the message and after few F5 i just closed the tab.
Rokco 9y ago
This post is a list of 166 articles about bitcoin dying, that's just the first in the list.

mirimir 9y ago

That's a great compilation. Definitely worth a bookmark.

Laforet 9y ago

And what is the point? Does the price prove that bitcoin has not failed? To me, bitcoin died sometime in 2013 when mining became hopelessly centralised, breaking the economic and security models Satoshi had set forth. The bitcoin thereafter has been a soulness Frankenstein animated by a mixture of ego, greed, and hubris. I don't want to make any predictions, but when the crash comes it will be over before you knew it. As for the wider field of blockchain/DLT, it bears an uncanny parallel to the early days of nuclear physics when radioactivity was first discovered by the Curies: The science behind it was be sound, yet any benefit to mankind was overshadowed by the cottage industry selling radioactive snake oil for a long time before the mania died down. And people died when basic precautious were not taken. It may work down the road and it may not, but right now all I see is woo in every direction.

colordrops 9y ago
Do you understand the Bitcoin security model? It has not been broken. And do you understand what "woo" means? Your hand wavey proclamations about Bitcoin fit the bill.
- madshiva 9y ago
  A good model would not allow wallet attack...
  - nikcub 9y ago
    Wallets aren't part of Bitcoin - they're an implementation abstraction. The blockchain gives you unspent transaction outputs and a way to verify them and sign a script to unlock them. The key management involved in a Bitcoin wallet faces the same problems and complications as any other implementation of crypto and user key management faces. Some have implemented it well, some have implemented it poorly.
Freak_NL 9y ago
Trying to learn something about blockchain: the technology and its applications right now, means wading through masses of hype and parties anxious to 'get into it' before it's 'too late'. In healthcare IT the blockchain is hot right now. Government bureaus are pushing for adoption, care institute executives heard somewhere that this blockchain thing is the bee's knees and well suited for healthcare stuff like insurance mutations, and IT vendors are worried someone else will beat them to it. Is it a useful technology? Probably. But right now for many the blockchain is the goal, not the solution to any specific problem.

harwoodleon 9y ago

A balanced view is that all the articles hold some substance. But the technology is more at threat through its own community than any external force. One question that I don't really understand is how can the total supply of BTC serve its own growth. If the market cap reaches the same value as gold for example - how long before one Satoshi becomes too large a divisible unit to be useful? Can you divide Satoshi?

colordrops 9y ago
With a hard fork you can, yes.
lokedhs 9y ago
Isn't the greater problem that the total market cap of bitcoin is always going to be 22 million? In other words, the single bitcoin I own will always be worth 1/22M of the entire market cap, regardless of how much it's used. And I only own one. There are lost of people out there who owns thousands of bitcoins. 1000 bitcoins is 1/22k of the entire market cap. How could this be sustainable?
- zdkl 9y ago
  I don't understand how the issue you're describing is specific to bitcoin. Consider that wealth in the real world also accumulates in a non gaussian distribution.
  - Nition 9y ago
    I think the comment is saying that in other currencies, if your currency's total value increases, usually more money is printed to keep the value reasonable. Even with other cryptocurrencies, Ripple for instance has a large unallocated holding of coins that they're meant to siphon out into the market to keep the value per coin under control. Whereas with bitcoin you can hold onto the same amount of money and if more and more people buy in, it becomes more and more valuable. I'd add that I almost feel like there could be a bit of a paradox there in regards to Bitcoin's actual usefulness for real purchases. Let’s say Bitcoin takes off and various merchants start accepting it. Since Bitcoin is useful now, more people buy in. But since more people are always buying in and the total pool is limited, the value continues to go up. The more merchants support Bitcoin, the more people adopt Bitcoin, and the more valuable it becomes. The more the value continues to increase, the better it seems as an investment, and the more people lean towards holding instead of spending. The more useful it becomes, the better it is to not spend it.

dmitriid 9y ago

In any other world a change of 30-40% per day in any direction would be a cause of concern. Bitcoin enjoys a reality distortion field that keeps it inflated beyond any reason. It's not that different from any other coin on these lists: http://deadcoins.com http://deadcoins.com, https://magoo.github.io/Blockchain-Graveyard/ https://magoo.github.io/Blockchain-Graveyard/

fsniper 9y ago
In what sense this lists, and bitcoin are different from these? https://trader2trader.co/2012/11/28/list-of-590-dead-currencies-demonetized-r-i-p/ https://trader2trader.co/2012/11/28/list-of-590-dead-currenc...
- dmitriid 9y ago
  I'd say they are more similar to the Guano Era[1]. A highly sought-after resource which becomes irrelevant once better/cheaper alternatives are found. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guano_Era https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guano_Era
- notahacker 9y ago
  Well for a start half those dead currencies were replaced with new currencies issued by a different authority and their holders compensated, often at parity. As for the ones that collapsed, they tended to involve dictators and wars rather than people simply deciding they weren't worth wasting time on because nobody was interested in exchanging them.
  - cesarb 9y ago
    > Well for a start half those dead currencies were replaced with new currencies issued by a different authority and their holders compensated, often at parity. Indeed, I see on that list the several Brazilian Cruzeiro/Cruzado currencies. The only difference between each of these and their predecessor is that three zeros were cut: if you had 1000 of the old currency, you had 1 of the new currency. The last of these was replaced by the current currency (Real) at a slightly different rate (2750 instead of 1000). That is, it was more like a renaming than the currency actually dying and being replaced. And there was no different authority in these cases, they were all issued by the same central bank.

firefoxd 9y ago

I think bitcoin is a lot like Snapchat. A lot of people dismiss it because it doesn't make total sense. But those who do, are trying to work with it. Yes, it may die next week. But next week may also bring another reason to stick with it. Even if it dies, we already had a taste of it, what are we gonna do? Not try again?

0xFluegel 9y ago
Well... We made it to the moon once - and then decided that it's not neccessary to do it again... /s

steeleduncan 9y ago

One of the early obituaries on that list mentions that the finite supply of bitcoins, combined with lost crypto keys and hoarding will eventually lead to a situation where there aren't enough coins for it to be a viable currency. Clearly, in that situation you can subdivide coins as far as required, so it isn't a risk to bitcoin as such. However, I have often wondered if there is any estimate of the "effective supply", that is to say ("minted coins" - "coins where the private key is lost")?

nkkollaw 9y ago
I bet a lot of people lose their private key, but I bet that if there's anything in your wallet you'll be careful. So, there are probably a lot of private keys that get lost, but not a lot of bitcoins.
- steeleduncan 9y ago
  Pragmatically, that is probably true, and bitcoin won't last for millenia either (e.g. if sha-256 has a weakness, or quantum computers render ecdsa useless). Nevertherless, there is >0 probability of multiple harddrive failure, or much greater probability of incompetence, so there must be some rate of loss of bitcoins over time, and i'd be interested to know what that is. I think it is interesting because once the speculation dies down, the market will set the fiat price of bitcoins according to the actual supply and demand, so this attrition has a real affect. For example, imagine if the coins believed to belong to Satoshi (1 million coins out of the current 16.5 million) were to move. The mere knowledge that they can be moved would increase the effective supply by 6-7% overnight, the effect could be dramatic.
- klez 9y ago
  Well, if you lost the private key at the beginning, when they weren't worth much, you wouldn't have been that careful. So I'd wager that there is a fair amount of lost coins around.

jlebrech 9y ago

I wish it went down to $80 again so I can invest. really missed the boat.

drcross 9y ago
These line of thinking is toxic. What have you done in the meantime? Will you be back in 4 years when bitcoin is in the 6 figures region moaning how you should have bought at 4000?
- nolok 9y ago
  That exact same reasoning was used to buy overpriced tulip bulbs. So I don't see how your line of thinking isn't at least as toxic as his.
kabes 9y ago
You can still buy $80 worth of BTC and you'd have the same chances you had 3 years ago.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

mirimir 9y ago

I've followed digital currencies for many years. As I recall, there were two libertarian threads that culminated in Bitcoin. One focused on evils of fiat currencies and central banking. The other focused on rights to private commerce, without state interference. And the potential to starve states, by making taxation impossible. Bitcoin handles both pretty well, in my experience. Except for the transaction-scaling problems, anyway. Price fluctuations just reflect its miniscule capitalization, and movements of capricious investors. When Bitcoin, or more likely, one of its descendants, reaches fiat-currency scale, that won't be so problematic.

lawlessone 9y ago
Thing is, with a public ledger bitcoin is only partially private.
- mirimir 9y ago
  The ledger is public, to avoid double spending and other stuff. But addresses and wallets can be as unlinked and anonymous as you like.

WheelsAtLarge 9y ago

The reality is that bitcoin has the first mover advantage. Any other virtual currency has a big mountain to climb to catch up to it. 100 years from now bitcoin will be around since there is no one entity that defines it and control it. What the community has shown is that they are willing to adapt to the situation. Right now bitcoin has problems but as time moves the code will be modified. What's happening now is that bitcoin is being locked into people's mind as a currency with real value. Whether one can justify it or not is irrelevant. As long as one person is willing to trade goods and services for it will survive. No one throws away a stack of money if they can help it. The community will not let bitcoin die. The mistake people make is that all the current bitcoin constraints are locked forever. I had the same idea but I finally realized that it is not true. The currency is defined by code and code can be changed. It's very hard to change since the majority of the community has to agree but its possible and people will find a way to keep it going. One way to think about bitcoin's future is to look at what software was like 40 years ago and then look at what it looks like today. There's a big difference. Bitcoin still has a long way to go before it can be defined as a mature technology. I have no doubt that what we call bitcoin now will not be what we call bit coin 40 years from now. It will evolve in to the currency and store of value people are hoping it should be. No, bitcoin is not dead.

speedplane 9y ago
> What's happening now is that bitcoin is being locked into people's mind as a currency with real value. I'm not certain that's true. Most of the trading in bitcoin is based on speculation that it'll rise in value, and secondly, that'll become more commonplace. Currently, it's not a useful (or usable) form of currency for the vast majority of the planet. So there's no value backing it (yet). The true test is in X many years, whether BitCoin will be used as actual currency, in which case the value will keep climbing, or whether it'll remain a speculative investment, in which case it'll crash. I learned about bitcoin when it was less than a dollar, and I'd love to invest, but it's just gambling.
- WheelsAtLarge 9y ago
  Keep in mind that there people growing up now that will think of bitcoin as having true value. Bitcoin will not be a thing that suddenly appeared in the world as it did for us. So they will be more comfortable using it. They will just think of it as another monetary asset. The boom and bust aspect will slowly disappear. One of the problems with it is the lack of things you can buy with it. As more people get used to it as a currency the more goods that will be available for purchase. Then we'll know what the true exchange value of it will be. Right now the value is basically guessing and it's driven by greed and fear. That will change. Chase's CEO might be right that it's a bubble but that does not mean it does not have value. The reality is that we don't know its value as a monetary unit. It might go to a million or crash to 1. No one knows. As the problems with it get ironed out we'll find out. People forget that the only reason fiat currency has value is because you can always find someone that will exchange it for goods or services. It has no value on its own. It's a believe in people's mind. Bitcoin will have that same trust in time. One big advantage over fiat is that the community is world wide and it's not locked to one country. I can see a country disappearing from the world but by definition bitcoin is a world monetary unit that's slowly embedding itself into the world psychic. I truthfully believe that in less than 40 years it will as common as the dollar is now. My only fear is that the world's countries will fear it and outlaw it. That doesn't mean it will go away but might slow it down. BTW, I was a anti bitcoin guy but after a little analysis I've come around.

paxpelus 9y ago

Many people on HN are so negative in bitcoin that it seems that they are focused on the tree instead of the forest. This technology can solve the main problem human society faces and this is corruption. Human greed is what keeps bitcoin alive but this is not a bug, it is a feature.

ship_it 9y ago
To be honest, Bitcoin in no way does solve corruption. Actually, Bitcoin in current state can only increase corruption in society by giving a sense of anonymity. Political corruption on other hand, might be solved through it, but thats the case we are left to see.
- knocte 9y ago
  Maybe the OP refers to corruption as two political/financial practices: QE and fractional reserve banking.
  - lawlessone 9y ago
    >QE and fractional reserve banking. Those are features.
    - knocte 9y ago
      Nope, those are the main bugs of our current system.
- paxpelus 9y ago
  Bitcoin is not completely anonymous. The discussion is not only about Bitcoin or PoW. We found a way to do transactions that nobody can tamper with. We managed to solve a really serious problem and this is that when money is involved people get greedy and corrupt. No human being should be in a high enough position to steal money or tamper the transactions or commit fraud. It is so obvious that distributed ledgers are a solution to this and it disappoints me that the HN community cannot see it.
9y ago

nkkollaw 9y ago

It's almost as if writing about Bitcoin crashing sold newspapers/pageviews... Weird.

speedplane 9y ago
Journalists discussing BitCoin is in some ways a form of mining BitCoins.
- nkkollaw 9y ago
  ...and undermining journalism.

vinchuco 9y ago

The sun has risen at least 166 times already, but it is not proof that the sun will rise tomorrow. My point is not to confirm or deny the bear or the bull, but to point out this is simply noise. When are market news reliable indicators of supply and demand?

shawabawa3 9y ago
> The sun has risen at least 166 times already, but it is not proof that the sun will rise tomorrow Not proof, but it very strongly implies it
rythie 9y ago
However, there is much greater than 50% chance that it will.
cesarb 9y ago
> The sun has risen at least 166 times already, but it is not proof that the sun will rise tomorrow. If the sun has risen at least 166 times, the probability that it will rise tomorrow is at least 99.4% according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunrise_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunrise_problem
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

ftw45 9y ago

No, it didn't die and it won't die anytime soon. But dollars, Euro's and all other physical currencies are about to die(soon). Why? Because just like the change from gold and silver coins to almost worthless nickel, this type of currency creates a whole new universe of possibilities. With nickel and paper money, banks can create as much cash as they like, it's virtual value, not real. Crypto currency is just like that, but more secure and not (yet) controlled by the banks. And again you see the allegations that crypto would be a pyramid scheme etc.. Do people notice that our actual economy/financial-system is a very proven pyramid scheme? All money flows to the rich. And especially those people in power now, are getting a little nervous seeing they might lose some control. Crypto currencies can be a boon for humanity, unless governments are going to criminalize it and only allow banks to use the technology.

lawlessone 9y ago
>But dollars, Euro's and all other physical currencies are about to die(soon). Yeah, your type have been saying that a long time.
madshiva 9y ago
No bank can't create cash like they want. There's regulation, authority. Do you know how bank work? Bitcoin and all crypto currency are not secure, a lot of people lose money stole by hacker then why arguing that is secure? because there's some math behind it? There's no conspiracy with bank or governments, only people that want to be richer and richer, because of this stupid economy. The great democraty, this is the reason, because we failed to put priority about life quality, but about making money = success Also if people stop looking for conspiracy but start to elect, vote for a more better world where everyone can own the same amount of land (that mean I have right to go to amercia without your passeport because you are not a real amercian, just a Citizen of the World), can have the same access to medecine or wathever, there's no need of money. We all are little ants.
- bertolo1988 9y ago
  "No bank can't create cash like they want.", sadly they can. All they have to do is to lend some money.

rajadigopula 9y ago

Most analysts from traditional mindset making the mistake of analyzing bitcoin like they do stocks or fiat currency which can rely on a country's economy or political scenarios or a company's decisions to make profits. But, Bitcoin is like anything they have seen before or learnt in their college. Most volatility corresponds to news of it's survival at the moment and due to the reason the market is failing to agree with a fair value as no one knows it's future but is aware of the nobility of the technology and how it skipped the hands of any one controlling it by being decentralized. As the world keeps adopting to it the demand is getting increased. And there is still a lot of geographical terrain to cover. When a traditional wall-street analyst sees a peak, he was trained to freak out and sense it as an extreme point of the crowd's greed. And shows off his training by telling the world that it's a bubble and it's going to burst, as the peak is occupied mostly by greedy investors who panic on losing their money and sells off double the speed they entered the trade. But this stands true when the value of the instrument surpasses the intrinsic value of the asset way too high. But with bitcoin no one knows hence majority investors still think it cheap and keep piling up.

rajadigopula 9y ago
I think some stupid Chinese govt. bot down voted my comment.
- dang 9y ago
  This comment breaks the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Please read them and follow them when commenting here.

geraldbauer 9y ago

My humble analysis why blockchains (and bitcoins on the blockchain) are like tulips. Like tulips you can always grow more and with blockchains you can always build / start your own blockchains. Building your own blockchain lets say in Ruby is about 20 lines of code. See the point? It's easy (not rocket sience ;-). See the [Awesome Blockchains](https://github.com/openblockchains/awesome-blockchains https://github.com/openblockchains/awesome-blockchains) for more (about building your own blockchains in Python, JavaScript, Ruby, etc.) in minutes.

tashoecraft 9y ago
My humble analysis why paper currencies are like tulips. Like tulips you can always grow more, and with paper currencies you can always print/start your own. Creating a paper currency on say, paper, takes only 1 minute. See the point? It's easy (not rocket science ;). My humble analysis of why startups are like tulips. Like tulips you can grow more, and with startups you can always build/start your own. Building your own startup is easy, just think of an idea, say Uber for toilet paper, and it takes only 1 minute. See the point? It's easy (not rocket science ;-). Sorry but I had too, the easiness to create something has no barring on how hard it is to make it a globally used system. Whether you can create a new blockchain in minutes is completely irrelevant and offers nothing to the discussion.

magma17 9y ago

obviously FUD to keep poor people poor.

giancarlostoro 9y ago

There's way too much for me to know it all about Bitcoin but say I want to learn more about building a blockchain, is there a spec for just that from the Bitcoin spec, or is the spec all inclusive? I have to admit I never read the original paper(s) I just mined BTC back in 2009 when I (somehow) heard about it, and have left it alone since. Funnily enough I was ignoring it all, till I realized my mining pool had all my BTC so I transfered it out (nothing significant enough, but just enough to allow me to peek curiosity again). I'm curious if anyone has designed their own Blockchain based tech that is focused on that aspect that has several industries interested in Blockchain technology. Minus any Bitcoin specifics that is.

kbody 9y ago

I am mostly commenting on a big amount of comments deeming Bitcoin a failure or similar. The Bitcoin of ~a month ago is not the same as today, that's a big power, to have upgradable decentralized money. Certainly Bitcoin is not perfect, but the good thing is that there are a lot of talented engineers working on the issues and new features, the majority of them even before Bitcoin really was worth much. But having it being valuable at the moment also acts a huge security/bug bounty and an incentive for more people work on it and make it better. = All about the price Even if the price crashes horribly, unless there's a unrecoverable catastrophe, it will keep on going because there's an ecosystem around it and clear price-independent advantages. Using Bitwage to be paid in Bitcoins and avoid crazy cross-border/currency fees of banks will be still an advantage no matter the price of bitcoin. Same goes for prepaid/debit cards backed with bitcoin. Doing commerce painlessly without crazy procedures with Africa & Latin America or wherever. Being immune to capital controls and asset seizures. = Hype I hate the hype everywhere, but it's not the tech's fault so many cluessless & irrelevant gold-diggers try to ride the wave, just with a lot of things you can just ignore. If you follow the devs, they are pragmatic and don't try to pump-up things like most altcoins do, that's something I greatly respect. Anyway, there's a long way to go, but just because there are flaws at the moment, it doesn't mean it's dead, it's a live technology. Being pragmatic is key, Bitcoin is not some Utopian perfect invention, but it's good enough for a lot of things at the moment and I see it getting better every year. Bitcoin offers true permissionless commerce and ownership of wealth and it now might not make any difference in a lot of democratic countries until it begins to do.

wruza 9y ago

I assume my question will be lost in comments, but I'll ask it anyway here, because it seems to be very interesting side of cryptocoins. My boss is somewhat educated in economy and routinely tries to model the bitcoin economics. He came to the conclusion that the amount of bitcoin turnover is supported not by regular players, but by country-sized economies like China and probably few other states. Most of capitalization comes from really, really huge amount of money, because there is not so much many money even in criminal activities like drugs, trafficking, arms, etc. Bitcoin is alive not because of blockchain mining and not because of human's freedom, but because it enables to move capitals and gray industry volumes across the borders with no usually defined penalty. If that is true, there is strict confidence that it's not going away in near future. But that also means that it is surely regulated or at least heavily monitored. Or it leads all of us to such economical crashes that world never seen (and can't just deal with). Idk where it goes and how one evaluates it, do you have any ideas on that hypothesis? The basic idea that regular people use it for freedom and security is parallel to this one, and is of no interest since the volume of it in ordinary currencies is too low to consider.

dcchambers 9y ago

Bitcoin, as it was originally envisioned, IS dead. It's not a replacement for cash. It's prohibitively expensive to use for regular transactions. It's also a colossal waste of energy. It's become similar to stocks/ETFs...something people trade/speculate on/gamble with to try and get rich. When I had bitcoin first explained to me in ~2011 I was told that it would save us all from the evil that are banks, transaction fees, and the government. Six years later, bitcoin has made a few people very, very wealthy, but us laymen still can't use it as a cash replacement and the people with decision making power in the Bitcoin community are not interested in ever letting that happen. It was a fun experiment, but it failed its primary goal.