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I agree, and I'm skeptical of Bitcoin on many levels. The vision it offers is very attractive, but each so-called feature comes with so many caveats that it's n
by flatline 9y ago
I agree, and I'm skeptical of Bitcoin on many levels. The vision it offers is very attractive, but each so-called feature comes with so many caveats that it's never clear there is a real advantage. Still, I think people hold onto the vision.
As digital cash, I can buy something online more or less anonymously, without a middle man. Well, except for the miners. And my anonymity is blown if the person from whom I purchase ever reveals my real-world identity. And the fact that the transaction may reveal my entire spending history. Other cryptos offer better privacy guarantees of course. Oh and the tax burden of buying a pair of socks with BTC makes it terribly unattractive for practical uses.
A nearly instant, low-fee settlement layer is great. Except the fee schedule is market driven which sucks for fee calculations, and the instant part is no longer true with full blocks, RBF, and other realities of a popular distributed ledger.
The deflationary model is interesting and is great for investment but not so great for money. And the volatility is too high to consider Bitcoin an investment.
The currency exists independent of national borders. But, rogue states can horde it and work around international sanctions, and it's quite popular for money laundering.
Be your own bank - with all the risks that may not be so obvious at first glance, and none of the benefits that real banks get.
The list goes on. These "features" will keep selling bitcoin, I don't know the dream will ever really die.
- tehlike 9y agoIF you want privacy, there are alternative coins that are fairly active with development: Monero, zcash, etc. I am not endorsing anything, but i believe the privacy & fungibility are important in a digital currency. On the sad side, people who put money in bitcoin are thinking it's a great investment. This is not to devalue your comment, but for the past 10 years, almost every years, the low lows have been increasing. Be your own bank is not a meaningful goal, though, at least with the way things are. Coinbase, for example, holds about 10% of circulating bitcoin is what i hear.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- stef25 9y agoMaybe this isn't the right place to ask this question, but how is Monero any different than the Bitcoin example you respond to, when the vendor you sent your crypto currency to to exposes your identity?
- flatline 9y agoMonero uses ring signatures to mix your transaction outputs with others', providing "plausible deniability" of the subsequent inputs. It furthermore uses stealth addresses to hide the transaction history to an individual address. This is not foolproof and has been shown to be traceable in a number of cases, but it's a heck of a lot better for anonymity than bitcoin.
- tehlike 9y agoThere are new improvement - there was a article about monero being tracable > 50% of the time, but it was fixed right around when the article came out to be. As for the original goals of bitcoin, maybe monero is closer to it. I don't know.