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> However this pans out, there are going to be a lot of people on one side that were totally, completely wrong. I doubt there is much middle ground for this. I

> However this pans out, there are going to be a lot of people on one side that were totally, completely wrong. I doubt there is much middle ground for this. I am starting to have doubts on this one. I mean, I fully admit that if bitcoin ever becomes widely accepted as currency/money, something in my worldview has been horribly wrong and I need to learn from that. But the other side can keep on burning fossil fuels worth millions of dollars daily indefinitely [1] and keep on moving the goalposts and claiming that the still undefined actual use case that is worth billions of trillions may actually be just behind the corner. And we likely are beyond the point where anything could convince cryptocoiners otherwise.[2] I strongly doubt (and thus cast a challenge to prove me wrong...) cryptocoiners can come up with a clearly defined possible future event (or lack of event) that would irrefutably prove them wrong. [1] Well, of course not indefinitely, there are things like the sun turning to a red giant and the Big Freeze of the universe that may cause some hiccups there, but indefinitely for the purpose of this analysis. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails

csomar 8y ago
How old are you? The young are embracing crypto-currencies. The only guys that I see holding this back are 35+ and particularly 45+. Who, obviously, do have the wealth to move crypto to higher valuation. There is nothing wrong with your worldview. You don't have the correct worldview, you'll never will and no one will. The world is complex and chaotic.
- MrEldritch 8y ago
  Speaking as a young person (22), I'm certainly not embracing cryptocurrencies and neither is anyone I know. Bitcoin is virtually useless as a currency[1] and, having no other compelling use-case whatsoever, cannot really be a store of value either. (Lightning network may change that, but that also amounts to totally replacing almost all of Bitcoin by building a hopefully less shitty system on top of it. Lightning being necessary means that Bitcoin as Satoshi envisioned it has failed utterly.) Ethereum strikes me as basically a gimmick, and the constant calls for forks as some completely immutable smart contract gets irrevocably fucked up and the only option is to roll back the whole damn blockchain does not strike me as a problem that is even fixable; smart contracts just don't seem to be a good idea. It also seems terribly inefficient as a computing platform and unlikely to scale well. I don't deny that the dream of decentralized, fast, low-transaction-cost, disruptive payment infrastructure would be groundbreaking if it could be achieved without instantly breaking due to scaling problems and wild speculation. But I'm not convinced that blockchain is even remotely the right tool to deliver it. [1] Admittedly, not as useless as it was a couple months ago, when average transaction time would randomly spike through the roof and transaction fees were insane. But it seems like the reason that happened is not because problems were fixed, but because people moved away from Bitcoin and eased pressure on the creaking system. Bitcoin works only when people aren't trying to use it.
  - scalesolved 8y ago
    Why does a store of value need a compelling use-case? If you hold millions in gold it's most likely in a vault doing nothing except taking up space and storage costs alongside it's primary use case of being a store of value.
    - MrEldritch 8y ago
      It needs to be useful for something other than just "being a store of value". Gold 'works' as well as it does because there's at least something tying it down to market fundamentals. You can make jewelry out of it, you can coat electrical contacts with it. There's reasons besides collective psychology that gold is worth something particular which isn't $0. A digital asset like Bitcoin has nothing tying it down to market fundamentals at all unless there's something else to do with it. It's a disconnected number flapping about in the wind. And as we've observed, since the value people ascribe to a Bitcoin is entirely psychological, the price can do anything. I'm not storing my value in anything I can't be fairly certain will have similar or greater value in the future. A Bitcoin that could be used as a currency would have some inherent value, because being able to use something as currency is valuable. Something has to be at least a little useful for its value to be reliable. (Having a trusted organization, which you expect to be around for a long time, that promises to exchange it for something useful counts as being useful itself.)
      - csomar 8y ago
        Not looking to argue with you as it seems like you have an idea stuck to your mind. But bitcoin/crypto is very useful to tax evasion, capital flight, criminal organizations, scams, speculative trading, wealth transfer, and other stuff. Some of these are trillion dollar markets.
        scalesolved 8y ago
        All of that is true to fiat, which of the above in your list is not possible with fiat?
- richardknop 8y ago
  I'm 29 and most crypto enthusiasts I have met were actually in 30-40 year range.
  - bytematic 8y ago
    Because young people don't have the money, or if they do they don't have the risk tolerance with student loan debt.
- beefield 8y ago
  > The young are embracing crypto-currencies. As an anecdote, of the three first friends/acquaintances of mine that came to my mind that seem to have strong interest in cryptocurrencies, two are past 45 years old. > You don't have the correct worldview, you'll never will and no one will. There are differences, however, how wrong a world view is. I personally are a quite strong believer of Popperian philosophy of falsifiability, and currently cryptocurrency embracers do not pass that smell test but are there somewhere around religious zealots on the credibilty scale. You know, also creationism may be right, and being wrong in that discussion as an opponent to creationist has much higher price than being wrong about bitcoin future.
  - yesforwhat 8y ago
    > As an anecdote, of the three first friends/acquaintances of mine that came to my mind that seem to have strong interest in cryptocurrencies, two are past 45 years old. Boomers know bubbles.
- pedrocr 8y ago
  >The only guys that I see holding this back are 35+ and particularly 45+. Who, obviously, do have the wealth to move crypto to higher valuation. So a bunch of young people have bought into a new currency and/or store of value and you're complaining that the older crowd isn't further propping up that market? Why would I move my investments in productive assets like stocks, real estate and other things into Bitcoin? I don't have it in gold, I don't have it in established currencies, why would I want Bitcoin as an asset? I still haven't seen a good argument for why Bitcoin's features should warrant what is, in the growth scenarios of its proponents, probably the biggest wealth transfer in the history of our civilization. Or any argument for that matter really.
- sumedh 8y ago
  > The young are embracing crypto-currencies. Are they actually using it to make payments or just HODL?
Taek 8y ago
Why don't you believe today that bitcoin will ever be widely accepted? What challenges do you see?
- beefield 8y ago
  There are quite a few challenges. The obvious ones are the technical ones regarding the transaction costs and capacity of the network (that may or may not be solved with Lightning.) But those are small ones. The real issue is that bitcoin people seem to have not given that much thought what modern money actually is and what is the role financial industry actual plays in the modern economy. So, some not so organized thoughts on that: First, what is money? What most people nowadays consider as money is debt, or credit which equals trust. Basically money is the tool to keep the society to figure out who owes whom and how much. Thinking that it would be somehow good that we have a limited amount of debt we can have in the society is, well, mindbogglingly stupid idea in my head. Also removing the trust from the money makes no sense to me, and I really do not know how that could be accomplished (even in bitcoin, you need to trust some third party to assign some value to your bitcoins tomorrow). And bitcoiners have not given that much thought on the credit side of the money. How is lending supposed to work with bicoin/smart contracts/whatever? One of the more important functions of financial sector is to convert your overnight deposit to my 20 year mortgage. There is literally nothing in bitcoin that would disrupt that functionality. But let's assume bitcoin comes as a generally accepted currency. Now there are going to be institutions that are going to offer custodian services to hold your bitcoins because it is quite risky for a normal person to hold the actual bitcoins. These are insured against hacking and whatnot. Now, there is a need for lending and borrowing, so one day someone will figure out that if this institution is allowed to lend these bitcoins in custody forward (note, very prudently), the institution is able to offer much lower custody fees. Actually they are able to pay for you to give your bitcoins to their custody. As this institution is very prudent and everyone trusts this institution very much, someone is going to figure out that actually you do not need to get your bitcoins out of the institution to pay for your coffee, but the coffee shop is happy to take as a payment a promise that instead of paying me, the institution is going to pay the bitcoins to coffee shop owner. And almost magically, we have full fractional reserve banking and unlimited monetary supply. Without any regulatory oversight, of course. Finally, there is no mechanism (either before or after this rebirth of fractional reserve banking) that would anyhow stabilize the value of one bitcoin. I do sometimes read very handvawy opinions that when bitcoin gains traction it somehow naturally stabilizes in value. But that is only wishful thinking, nothing more. If there is no mechanism to stabilize the value, then the value is defined by the ones that are willing to pay the most at any given time and that is for sure not stable. Which brings me to my last point. How delusional you need to be to think that bitcoin is anyhow good "store of value"? I mean, to me, if I want to put my wealth for whatever reason to something that is called "store of value" the one single most important criteria to judge the stores of value would be how well the thing actually stores value. And a highly volatile gambling token is a really bad store of value. (Applies partially to gold as well, but gold at least has some intrinsic value). And that is not going to change until there is a mechanism to keep the token value stable. Currently those mechanisms are called Central Banks.
endangered 8y ago
The fossil fuel issue is solely an issue with Bitcoin's proof of work algorithm. There are alternatives that use virtually no energy compared with proof of work, like proof of stake, which is being implemented on Ethereum.
- beefield 8y ago
  Solely an issue with bitcoins algorithm? Given that you obviously can technically change the algorithm, but instead bitcoin folks choose to continue the environmental disaster and literally collectively burn millions of dollars into air every single day, to me it indicates that there are some other underlying issues very much there as well. But that may be just me.
- freeone3000 8y ago
  Okay. But people are still using bitcoin. Why?
jabgrabdthrow 8y ago
I think there are two groups, one that shapeshifts and moves goalposts for the purpose of selling coins at a profit (either offloading a huge stash or being on the right side of the bubble cycle), and another that treats it like a portfolio piece next to their gold coins. The first is truly impossible to reason with. For the second, the event is simple: breaking the crypto or the crypto-economics in a way that prevents it from being scarce and “decentralized” (what’s it called when something is “actually, very centralized” but I can use it to move $50m across the rio grande?). How do you convince a goldbug that gold isn’t valuable because their lifetimes are not going to be thousands of years?

csomar 8y ago

How old are you? The young are embracing crypto-currencies. The only guys that I see holding this back are 35+ and particularly 45+. Who, obviously, do have the wealth to move crypto to higher valuation. There is nothing wrong with your worldview. You don't have the correct worldview, you'll never will and no one will. The world is complex and chaotic.

MrEldritch 8y ago
Speaking as a young person (22), I'm certainly not embracing cryptocurrencies and neither is anyone I know. Bitcoin is virtually useless as a currency[1] and, having no other compelling use-case whatsoever, cannot really be a store of value either. (Lightning network may change that, but that also amounts to totally replacing almost all of Bitcoin by building a hopefully less shitty system on top of it. Lightning being necessary means that Bitcoin as Satoshi envisioned it has failed utterly.) Ethereum strikes me as basically a gimmick, and the constant calls for forks as some completely immutable smart contract gets irrevocably fucked up and the only option is to roll back the whole damn blockchain does not strike me as a problem that is even fixable; smart contracts just don't seem to be a good idea. It also seems terribly inefficient as a computing platform and unlikely to scale well. I don't deny that the dream of decentralized, fast, low-transaction-cost, disruptive payment infrastructure would be groundbreaking if it could be achieved without instantly breaking due to scaling problems and wild speculation. But I'm not convinced that blockchain is even remotely the right tool to deliver it. [1] Admittedly, not as useless as it was a couple months ago, when average transaction time would randomly spike through the roof and transaction fees were insane. But it seems like the reason that happened is not because problems were fixed, but because people moved away from Bitcoin and eased pressure on the creaking system. Bitcoin works only when people aren't trying to use it.
- scalesolved 8y ago
  Why does a store of value need a compelling use-case? If you hold millions in gold it's most likely in a vault doing nothing except taking up space and storage costs alongside it's primary use case of being a store of value.
  - MrEldritch 8y ago
    It needs to be useful for something other than just "being a store of value". Gold 'works' as well as it does because there's at least something tying it down to market fundamentals. You can make jewelry out of it, you can coat electrical contacts with it. There's reasons besides collective psychology that gold is worth something particular which isn't $0. A digital asset like Bitcoin has nothing tying it down to market fundamentals at all unless there's something else to do with it. It's a disconnected number flapping about in the wind. And as we've observed, since the value people ascribe to a Bitcoin is entirely psychological, the price can do anything. I'm not storing my value in anything I can't be fairly certain will have similar or greater value in the future. A Bitcoin that could be used as a currency would have some inherent value, because being able to use something as currency is valuable. Something has to be at least a little useful for its value to be reliable. (Having a trusted organization, which you expect to be around for a long time, that promises to exchange it for something useful counts as being useful itself.)
    - csomar 8y ago
      Not looking to argue with you as it seems like you have an idea stuck to your mind. But bitcoin/crypto is very useful to tax evasion, capital flight, criminal organizations, scams, speculative trading, wealth transfer, and other stuff. Some of these are trillion dollar markets.
      - scalesolved 8y ago
        All of that is true to fiat, which of the above in your list is not possible with fiat?
richardknop 8y ago
I'm 29 and most crypto enthusiasts I have met were actually in 30-40 year range.
- bytematic 8y ago
  Because young people don't have the money, or if they do they don't have the risk tolerance with student loan debt.
beefield 8y ago
> The young are embracing crypto-currencies. As an anecdote, of the three first friends/acquaintances of mine that came to my mind that seem to have strong interest in cryptocurrencies, two are past 45 years old. > You don't have the correct worldview, you'll never will and no one will. There are differences, however, how wrong a world view is. I personally are a quite strong believer of Popperian philosophy of falsifiability, and currently cryptocurrency embracers do not pass that smell test but are there somewhere around religious zealots on the credibilty scale. You know, also creationism may be right, and being wrong in that discussion as an opponent to creationist has much higher price than being wrong about bitcoin future.
- yesforwhat 8y ago
  > As an anecdote, of the three first friends/acquaintances of mine that came to my mind that seem to have strong interest in cryptocurrencies, two are past 45 years old. Boomers know bubbles.
pedrocr 8y ago
>The only guys that I see holding this back are 35+ and particularly 45+. Who, obviously, do have the wealth to move crypto to higher valuation. So a bunch of young people have bought into a new currency and/or store of value and you're complaining that the older crowd isn't further propping up that market? Why would I move my investments in productive assets like stocks, real estate and other things into Bitcoin? I don't have it in gold, I don't have it in established currencies, why would I want Bitcoin as an asset? I still haven't seen a good argument for why Bitcoin's features should warrant what is, in the growth scenarios of its proponents, probably the biggest wealth transfer in the history of our civilization. Or any argument for that matter really.
sumedh 8y ago
> The young are embracing crypto-currencies. Are they actually using it to make payments or just HODL?

Taek 8y ago

Why don't you believe today that bitcoin will ever be widely accepted? What challenges do you see?

beefield 8y ago
There are quite a few challenges. The obvious ones are the technical ones regarding the transaction costs and capacity of the network (that may or may not be solved with Lightning.) But those are small ones. The real issue is that bitcoin people seem to have not given that much thought what modern money actually is and what is the role financial industry actual plays in the modern economy. So, some not so organized thoughts on that: First, what is money? What most people nowadays consider as money is debt, or credit which equals trust. Basically money is the tool to keep the society to figure out who owes whom and how much. Thinking that it would be somehow good that we have a limited amount of debt we can have in the society is, well, mindbogglingly stupid idea in my head. Also removing the trust from the money makes no sense to me, and I really do not know how that could be accomplished (even in bitcoin, you need to trust some third party to assign some value to your bitcoins tomorrow). And bitcoiners have not given that much thought on the credit side of the money. How is lending supposed to work with bicoin/smart contracts/whatever? One of the more important functions of financial sector is to convert your overnight deposit to my 20 year mortgage. There is literally nothing in bitcoin that would disrupt that functionality. But let's assume bitcoin comes as a generally accepted currency. Now there are going to be institutions that are going to offer custodian services to hold your bitcoins because it is quite risky for a normal person to hold the actual bitcoins. These are insured against hacking and whatnot. Now, there is a need for lending and borrowing, so one day someone will figure out that if this institution is allowed to lend these bitcoins in custody forward (note, very prudently), the institution is able to offer much lower custody fees. Actually they are able to pay for you to give your bitcoins to their custody. As this institution is very prudent and everyone trusts this institution very much, someone is going to figure out that actually you do not need to get your bitcoins out of the institution to pay for your coffee, but the coffee shop is happy to take as a payment a promise that instead of paying me, the institution is going to pay the bitcoins to coffee shop owner. And almost magically, we have full fractional reserve banking and unlimited monetary supply. Without any regulatory oversight, of course. Finally, there is no mechanism (either before or after this rebirth of fractional reserve banking) that would anyhow stabilize the value of one bitcoin. I do sometimes read very handvawy opinions that when bitcoin gains traction it somehow naturally stabilizes in value. But that is only wishful thinking, nothing more. If there is no mechanism to stabilize the value, then the value is defined by the ones that are willing to pay the most at any given time and that is for sure not stable. Which brings me to my last point. How delusional you need to be to think that bitcoin is anyhow good "store of value"? I mean, to me, if I want to put my wealth for whatever reason to something that is called "store of value" the one single most important criteria to judge the stores of value would be how well the thing actually stores value. And a highly volatile gambling token is a really bad store of value. (Applies partially to gold as well, but gold at least has some intrinsic value). And that is not going to change until there is a mechanism to keep the token value stable. Currently those mechanisms are called Central Banks.

endangered 8y ago

The fossil fuel issue is solely an issue with Bitcoin's proof of work algorithm. There are alternatives that use virtually no energy compared with proof of work, like proof of stake, which is being implemented on Ethereum.

beefield 8y ago
Solely an issue with bitcoins algorithm? Given that you obviously can technically change the algorithm, but instead bitcoin folks choose to continue the environmental disaster and literally collectively burn millions of dollars into air every single day, to me it indicates that there are some other underlying issues very much there as well. But that may be just me.
freeone3000 8y ago
Okay. But people are still using bitcoin. Why?

jabgrabdthrow 8y ago

I think there are two groups, one that shapeshifts and moves goalposts for the purpose of selling coins at a profit (either offloading a huge stash or being on the right side of the bubble cycle), and another that treats it like a portfolio piece next to their gold coins. The first is truly impossible to reason with. For the second, the event is simple: breaking the crypto or the crypto-economics in a way that prevents it from being scarce and “decentralized” (what’s it called when something is “actually, very centralized” but I can use it to move $50m across the rio grande?). How do you convince a goldbug that gold isn’t valuable because their lifetimes are not going to be thousands of years?