9 ms·

Bitcoin is a Cult

393 points by ccnafr 8y ago

znpy 8y ago
It really reminds me of this article: "Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution" ( https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths )
snek 8y ago
this elegantly summed up all my feelings on bitcoin; excellent read
Iv 8y ago
Bitcoin is a tool for tax evasion and money exchange on criminal assets. It turns out that also some geeks like to use it to bypass banks incompetence on international funds transfers but tax evasion is the use that drives BTC's value. The cult is just a small visible part of it but is a pretty minor aspect of it. BTC would exist without the cultists as long as Russian or Saudi assets need to be transfered without too much oversight.
- prostoalex 8y ago
  > BTC would exist without the cultists as long as Russian or Saudi assets need to be transfered without too much oversight Liquidity, though.
  - askmike 8y ago
    Exactly: No crypto in it's current state is liquid enough for any serious moving of money. Slipping, fees (and potential hedging costs) will eat you if you need to to move serious money. As such it only works for entities who don't have vast amounts of capital, eg. people who can't afford an army of tax lawyers to create complex legal tax evasion schemes to pay less tax than the rest of us.
    - stryk 8y ago
      If I'm moving stolen money (or magic math coins or whatever) I don't give a damn about the fees - it's 100% profit either way. It costs money to have it laundered, whether that goes to a shady lawyer(s) or a Bitcoin processor who cares, it doesn't matter it's all profit for the thief.
      - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
        > I don't give a damn about the fees - it's 100% profit either way If I worked in your criminal enterprise, I'd could tell your deputies "look at this chump, throwing money away. I'll hire trucks to haul cash and boost our profits by 20%. Help me 'replace' the leader and I'll split those gains with you."
        stryk 8y ago
        That's not how dirty money works if you want to get away with it. You need to launder it -- put it into something legitimate and, most importantly, get something back out of it that looks legitimate enough to pass casual scrutiny -- for this service anything and anyone, legit or not, is going to take a cut (or "fee"). It's the cost of doing criminal business. And if you're in a criminal enterprise and you even talk to the other members of the ent. about how you're going to move your money you ain't gonna be in the enterprise very long. That type of dirt you do by your lonesome or you die.
        JumpCrisscross 8y ago
        Needing to pay fees is different from not "giv[ing] a damn about the fees." I understand I have to pay a broker's fee when I buy and sell stock. That doesn't mean I'm indifferent to its level. Using Bitcoin to surreptitiously move large quantities of funds is almost always riskier and more expensive than traditional money-laundering techniques.
        stryk 8y ago
        And how may I ask did you come to this conclusion? Have you ever actually laundered dirty money?
- mixmastamyk 8y ago
  Would like to read more.
- daturkel 8y ago
  Do you have any sources for your claim that Bitcoin is used for large Russian/Saudi assets? It seems like the volume of BTC traded for illicit purposes is large in aggregate, but I'm not sure I've seen evidence of individual transfers being big. There are many ways that bad or unscrupulous actors can transfer money now that are actually less risky than Bitcoin.
  - zhte415 8y ago
    I'm not commenting on the use of Bitcoin for Russian/Saudi interests, simply some information on Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing. Money Laundering tends to be smallish sums deposited over time, resulting in large amounts. You can't wash 100MM in one go. Terrosist Financing tends to be a very large number of small transactions from multiple global sources in a very short space of time into one account/wallet/location. Like crowd-sourcing, in fact exactly the same as crowd-sourcing. Less risky than Bitcoin? In the end you have to get it out of the blockchain to be useful, so that's where the pointers from a law-enforcement perspecive are.
    - omeid2 8y ago
      I have zero interest in Bitcoin, but the idea that terrorists finance happens through cryptocurrency is very naive. Terrorism is sponsored on the ground, with goods, not money that you have to convert to some other money first, and then buy things you need.
      - zhte415 8y ago
        This is correct. International funding does happen. Funds travel across regions, countries, territoritories, very quickly, to enable the passing of goods on the ground.
  - Iv 8y ago
    Look at the BTC price fluctuations when another round of sanctions is added on Russia, when Cyprus cracked down on tax evaders or wduring the Saudi corruption crackdown. Everytime it peaks.
- zeth___ 8y ago
  A rather odd tool for tax evasion that has a record of the evaded tax for all eternity. It is vastly easier to launder money through regular channels than through a method that by it's definition records every transaction.
- ComputerGuru 8y ago
  That’s media sensationalism. BTC is not remotely anonymous and is useless as a tax evasion mechanism. Your money still has to go through someone to turn into BTC, and that’s the same as any other money laundering operation. Once their books are audited, your “safe haven” is worth nothing.
  - LateRuin 8y ago
    Vice has a good video on drug dealers lining up to use a Bitcoin ATM every day somewhere in an American ghetto. Bitcoin is 100% about drug dealing, gambling, and tax avoidance. You would have to be a total moron to go through all the hoops to use it otherwise. Its kinda like running desktop linux in that way.
    - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
      A lot of Bitcoin volume is criminal in nature. What is contested is that a large fraction of criminal fund flows go through Bitcoin. For the same reasons it sucks for individuals (volatile, slow, expensive, publicly recorded, difficult to spend and difficult to convert), it sucks for criminals.
    - scrollaway 8y ago
      > You would have to be a total moron to go through all the hoops to use it otherwise. Its kinda like running desktop linux in that way. So, what, you'd have to be a total moron to go through the hoops of installing Linux as well? Do you think before you comment? Your 100% figure is wrong given that I, at least, don't match any of your description. You can't go around claiming this kind of nonsense.
    - askmike 8y ago
      In most countries there are no hoops. In most places in Europe it's harder go get a bank account than to get bitcoin. Does that mean only morons go through all the hoops of obtaining bank accounts?
  - simias 8y ago
    I don't completely agree, you can move BTC around, mix it and exchange it for other cryptocurrencies while leaving only a very small trail. You don't have to involve other people directly, you don't have to carry duffel-bags of cash across borders etc... Of course if your money starts in your "books" before being converted into cryptocurrency then yeah, it's useless. But that's not the use case, it's more about laundering money that's not in the books to begin with (corruption, black market, undeclared sales etc...). I believe that right now the main deterrent to this scenario is the same reason people don't use cryptocurrencies for legit use cases: it's wildly unstable and you have to convert it to dollars or some other "fiat" to do anything with it.
- swfsql 8y ago
  >Bitcoin is a tool for tax evasion and money exchange on criminal assets You just made it more appealing and useful, since taxation is theft. Some "criminal" assets are incorrectly classified as criminal, so that's another +1 for Bitcoin.
maym86 8y ago
I don't disagree but isn't this true for the popularization of any technology. First it's just the nerds then come the less informed masses who don't fully understand the details along with the people trying to make money out of that fact.
- mlinksva 8y ago
  https://digitopoly.org/2018/06/21/the-paradox-of-technological-deja-vu/ https://digitopoly.org/2018/06/21/the-paradox-of-technologic... sort of takes that point of view.
- eksemplar 8y ago
  I think crypto is different in the way it actually doesn’t do anything. Bitcoin has been around for 9 years and you have never been able to use bitcoin as a currency fewer places than you can now.
  - Taek 8y ago
    9 years is not very long for an emerging technology. AI has been around since the 60's. Arpanet was established in 1969. Electricity was relatively well understood in 1750 (we had batteries that could store electrical charge) but the electric lightbulb wasn't invented until more than 100 years later. Bitcoin is very early, it's core infrastructure, it's going to take time to get established, and once it does get established it's going to change society as much as electricity did.
    - eksemplar 8y ago
      I work in the public sector, we’ve done quite a few proof of concepts on blockchain over the years, because we have actual use cases where a decentralized system makes sense. Like land registry, keeping bi-temporal records and case flows where citizens can follow their progress from home. We’ve yet to make it work though. Decentralized voting is too vulnerable and mining is too anti-climate, so it’s really all turning out to a big pile of nothing. My colleagues in banking are running into the same issues. The only place I’ve seen blockchain put to good use is at Maersk, who runs their claims of ownership on the tech. Because of port corruption, the claim of ownership linked to a container is more expensive to ship than the container itself, even though it’s a single a4 document. Their blockchain isn’t really decentralized though. By comparison the arpanet had an instant use case, so did electricity. They took time to spread, like everything new does, but they are very different from the blockchain in the way they weren’t searching for a reason to exist.
shobith 8y ago
Any network-effect driven product is a cult.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > Any network-effect driven product is a cult "The term cult usually refers to a social group defined by its religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs, or its common interest in a particular personality, object or goal" [1]. Membership connotes devotion. That is different from network effects. For example, telephones benefit from network effects. Buying a telephone does not join one onto a cult. (Buying Bitcoin, alone, does not admit one into a cult, either. It’s the behaviour of the community around Bitcoin that exhibits cult-like tendencies.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult
  - xiphias 8y ago
    Bitcoin has less than 0.1% adoption rate, I can imagine that people who bought telephones at 0.1% adoption rate had a common interest.
  - shobith 8y ago
    > Buying Bitcoin, alone, does not admit one into a cult, either. It’s the behaviour of the community around Bitcoin that exhibits cult-like tendencies. In that case, is Bitcoin really a cult? or is there a cult that is using Bitcoin?
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- scarejunba 8y ago
  Like telephones? Since cancelling your cell phone plan will effectively cut you off from your parents?
- shobith 8y ago
  small correction: s/is/starts out as/g To the telephone counter-examples in the responses: early telephone users were probably "culty" until the mainstream adopted it for useful stuff.
awt 8y ago
Bitcoin is a cult. Altcoins are cargo cults.
- Nursie 8y ago
  Altcoins are exactly the same
  - awt 8y ago
    That's what the Papua New Guineans thought.
    - Nursie 8y ago
      But in this case they have the planes too.
  - Izkata 8y ago
    I think that's the idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_programming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_programming > Cargo cult programming is a style of computer programming characterized by the ritual inclusion of code or program structures that serve no real purpose. > Cargo cult programming can also refer to the practice of applying a design pattern or coding style blindly without understanding the reasons behind that design principle.
    - Nursie 8y ago
      I don't really believe those apply here - they're the same and they're supposed to be, and they function the same. The level of understanding is largely irrelevant.
  - hnisgroupthink 8y ago
    Altcoins are setup to be differentiated or killed by market forces.
sidkhanooja 8y ago
r/bitcoin comes to mind whenever I think of the words "Bitcoin" and "cult" in the same sentence.
- shiado 8y ago
  If you want to read an interesting story read this. https://old.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/6rxw7k/informative_btc_vs_bch_articles/dl8v4lp/ https://old.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/6rxw7k/info...
  - SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
    Good overview, a lot of stuff I didn’t know. What I do know and have known is that anyone that believes the “it’s decentralized” part about any cryptocommodity is a damn fool. The database might be but nothing else. There are at any time a dozen people that could utterly destroy bitcoin with some well placed shenanigans.
    - sparkie 8y ago
      The shit you read on reddit is full of conspiracy theorist nonsense, and completely detached from Bitcoin development. Development is done and discussed in the open on mailing lists, github etc, and is subject to community review. There's a process outlined in BIP2 for any (non-trivial code) changes to the Bitcoin Core software. Of course, anyone can fork the software and make complaints publicly if there was malicious intent from the Core developers. There are a lot of people who have money invested in Bitcoin, and keep a close eye on the developments occurring.
      - SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
        I didn’t read anything on reddit. If you believe bitcoin can’t be crashed by a handful bad actors I fully encourage you to put your 401K in.
        8y ago
jaequery 8y ago
can someone name one successful startup that actually utilizes the blockchain to do something they couldnt have done without?
- Taek 8y ago
  well, you may not call Sia successful (a cloud storage network with 200 TB of data being actively stored on it), but it uses blockchain to achieve something that it could not achieve without.
  - quonn 8y ago
    That‘s very little data. And besides it could, of course, be done completely without blockchain even if the data is stored decentralised.
    - Taek 8y ago
      Sia works without any centralized orchestration, enabling you to safely use financially incentivized hosts without needing to know who they are, and allowing you to know that that only get paid if they store your data as promised. The hosts also can be guaranteed that they get paid even if the renter disappears, and you can't achieve those things without a blockchain.
- basejumping 8y ago
  Coinbase?
  - gitgud 8y ago
    Yeah, it seems the most successful crypto businesses are basically crypto exchanges for trading crypto...
    - the_cat_kittles 8y ago
      in a gold rush, sell shovels!
Obi_Juan_Kenobi 8y ago
There is, without a doubt, a Bitcoin cult. Or more generally, crypto-currency cults. The headline reads like it's only a cult, which isn't the case. Even the most critical observer must concede that these distributed networks are novel and interesting. The farther you move from social media, the less cult-like things get. The best discussion remains on listservs, and there is a lot of interesting and substantive discussion occurring.
- tekromancr 8y ago
  If you don't mind me asking, what are some listservs worth reading?
  - plankers 8y ago
    The bitcoin-dev mailing list is quite technical, but can be quite amusing when egos begin to clash. https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-d...
- jenga22 8y ago
  A lot of things are cults and it doesn't have to do much with social media or the behaviors he is outlining. Apple - You can argue Apple, the hardware company, is a cult. The fans are rabid in their support for the company. Often the discussions are not at all civil and in this particular case there is no financial incentive. Let's move even farther away. There are cults for clothing companies. Companies that make drinks. Gaming companies. Youtube streamers. Heck, there even cults in processor companies. Take for example AMD. I have had chats with people who just get livid when Intel vs. AMD conversations come up and I am thinking to myself "We are talking about CPUs right?". There are even cults with Operating Systems. Just ask the nix vs. Windows folks. Those discussions get heated. So I am not sure what he is trying to argue here. There will always be folks developing who will have a civil discourse and try to make the currency better and then there will be the peanut gallery. That comes with anything that gains wider exposure.
  - 8y ago
btcobserve 8y ago
Is the cult supported by artificial means? Often when cryptos including BTC drop, Tether amount goes up. They have expanded a lot since last year. Can they keep this up? How much Tether can they print?
Permit 8y ago
I think people have largely missed the point of the article. This is specifically in relation to a "magic hash" on a block that was mined on June 19, 2018 with the hash: 00000000000000000021e800c1e8df51b22c1588e5a624bea17e9faa34b2dc4a The leading zeros are the "proof-of-work". The bitcoin mining algorithm tries various nonces and generates many hashes until it finds one with (currently) 18 leading zeros. Surprisingly, much of the Bitcoin community doesn't know this and think that the leading zeros are special. The 21e800 is supposedly 'special' because it relates to the E8 'Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything'. A physics theory proposing a basis for unified field theory. Anyways, people have mistakenly calculated the odds of such an occurrence and believe it to be exceedingly rare. They are claiming that someone must have left it there and that it is either the result of: 1. A quantum computer 2. Time travelling 3. Something related to the Bible This doesn't really make sense and we can calculate the odds ourselves. It works out to roughly 3%. (1 - ((16^6 - 1) / (16^6)) ^ 500,000 blocks) = 0.03. There are 18 hashes with the leading non-zero digits 21e8 There are 3 hashes with the leading non-zero digits 21e80 There are many other "vanity hashes": (57ea1 or steal) https://blockchain.info/block/000000000057ea16558140e0b3995aef6dd2641624e1c790acf78424ce4e4b83 https://blockchain.info/block/000000000057ea16558140e0b3995a... (1055e5 or losses) https://blockchain.info/block/00000000001055e54d1d11bae837d58b1b5887947c0af9147b7418675d5198b5 https://blockchain.info/block/00000000001055e54d1d11bae837d5... These things are not rare, but as mentioned in the article, people have ascribed a sort of religious aspect to them. It's really weird. I also wrote about this today. If you're interested in some of the other weird responses see: https://medium.com/@thisisjoshvarty/lets-talk-about-hashes-or-00000000000000000021e800c1e8df51b22c1588e5a624bea17e9faa34b2dc4a-b8d8c8fb4e94 https://medium.com/@thisisjoshvarty/lets-talk-about-hashes-o...
- SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
  Great comment. My counter for people that may have misunderstood it before your post is that... if these people think 3% and “magic” occurrences of leetspeak are something note these are people I want to keep myself and my money far away from.
  - sdrothrock 8y ago
Synaesthesia 8y ago
When I first got into bitcoin I thought it could be a wonderful alternative to the current monetary system, I especially hoped it would be more equitably shares. Unfortunately it’s turned out to be as unequally shared as our current wealth is, if not more. Perhaps some kind of coin where everybody in the world is issued the same amount or something.
- SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
  >Perhaps some kind of coin where everybody in the world is issued the same amount or something. That’s an interesting idea for how a currency would work and I’m half tempted to ask you to explain if everyone had the same where is the value in it... but more tempted to suggest you develope a currency based on human fingers as most of us start with the same number.
  - ianai 8y ago
    One idea I’ve had and heard similar descriptions of elsewhere is to give people grants for various things. Ie. If you’re diagnosed with skin cancer you’re given a grant to fund the treatment. There’d have to be an algorithm in place to settle on the optimum grant - and I don’t claim to know it. Maybe it’s a grant that establishes a reimbursement contract between the service provider, the government, and the patient with an allotment for a maximal amount of profit. But giving people blocks of money is compatible with the capitalistic market. They would still have to choose how to spend their stipend(s) and the associated trade offs. I liken it to filling in missing data with the average value. Making sure everyone made at least the average per capita income wouldn’t change inflation, I think.
  - bitcoinisqueen 8y ago
    80% of people will spend/lose money right away. The reason people have no money, is because of the power of their habits and their lack of imagination and discipline. Money is merely s measurement tool that reflects your captured reciprocal altruism (or piracy of course). Tons of "poor people" regularly blow $100's/month on drugs such as caffeine, tobacco, beer or even illegal drugs and lottery tickets. Others will extend themselves with shiny clothes and new cars. It's frankly hilarious and apalling at the same time. Primary reason: predatory governments who make you spend 12 years in school and teach little to nothing of finance/value creation.
yipbub 8y ago
I've thinking of how many of the communities and belief systems on the internet are very similar to religions. I've started calling conspiracy theories the "religions of the internet" to make a point to my dad whose understandable distrust of the mainstream narrative has lead him to give more trust to the anti-establishment churches like https://themindunleashed.com https://themindunleashed.com that publish conspiracy theories, badly informed opinions on real science news, and pseudo-science mixed in with some real science news. His reaction to mistrusting the mainstream was to shift his trust somewhere easily identifiable as untrustworthy (to someone educated in the sciences) atleast partly because it acknowledges his mistrust of the mainstream and presents the only-mostly-wrong ideas in a fleshed out manner and authoritative tone. Some observations and layman speculation: I've just started reading Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harrari which suggests that there is a strong biological tendency toward adopting unsubstantiated beliefs to enable human cooperation at scale he called them collective myths. I've also once met a sincere flat earther, but I suspect his ideas arose from doing too much LSD before encountering the idea of tracing his beliefs to their root axioms.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
geraldbauer 8y ago
Thanks for speaking out. I've collected some anti bitcoin-propaganda - titled best of bitcoin maximalist [1] and crypto facts - true or false? [2] in free online booklets among others. [1] https://bitsblocks.github.io/bitcoin-maximalist https://bitsblocks.github.io/bitcoin-maximalist [2] https://bitsblocks.github.io/crypto-facts https://bitsblocks.github.io/crypto-facts
arisAlexis 8y ago
first time in history innovative tech with tangible benefits is called a cult. bitcoin hating is more of a cult
justatdotin 8y ago
yeah but $US is a Cult
- krrrh 8y ago
  It's a cult backed by taxing authority and police powers of a country. Basically what we call a national currency, but sure, muddy the waters.
Myrmornis 8y ago
Seems a silly article. The fact that bitcoin has attracted some idiots is entirely consistent with the hypothesis that bitcoin is a great success, and destined for continued success and not at all a cult.
phobosdeimos 8y ago
Bitcoin is for the paranoid and conspiracy theorists. The argument crypto currency supporters have is always Venezuela or the European banking crisis (hilarious because citizens didn't actually lose any money). If our banking system DOES collapse your crypto wallet won't save you.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > Bitcoin is for the paranoid and conspiracy theorists I would wager a small fraction of technically-literate paranoids and conspiracy theorists own Bitcoin. More plausible: people with some other tendency buy and then, when asked for an explanation, rationalise with conspiracy theory-like reasoning. (My guess for the tendency: gambling affinity.)
- swfsql 8y ago
  Venezuela citizens didn't lose any money? are you serious? So you must be happy, since most Venezuelans may be millionaires now! (but let's just forget about the fact that 1M+ from their currency is valued as less than a dollar; and that this value loss have destroyed their lives)
  - phobosdeimos 8y ago
    Venezuela is irrelevant to the situation in most of the world, its an outlier. Thats why it is a stupid argument for bitcoin. It would be like preparing for volcanoes in Denmark. Besides they are using USD and foreign banks in Venezuela not crypto currency. The rich in Venezuela haven't lost a cent I am willing to bet. And last but not least: bitcoin doesn't solve a single systemic problem Venezuela has. Its a corrupt failed state that could have been a South American Norway. Technology won't save it.
    - swfsql 8y ago
      >Venezuela is irrelevant (..) so are your thoughts about Bitcoin from their (those whose lives were saved because of cryptos) point of view, obviously. >Besides they are using USD A few may. But in such violent place, saving cryptos is cheaper than saving in any (physical) cash. Easier to trade as well, since banking is not THAT accessible and illegal USD trading have its safety's costs. >bitcoin doesn't solve a single systemic problem Venezuela has. all fiat is a systemic problem. According to Austrian School of Economics. Don't get me wrong, I'm not appealing to authority or anything. This is not meant for you. Someone might read our comments, care to actually know what's going on and look further into it.
PanosJee 8y ago
The author is wrong as in presenting the cult as a flaw. Every imaginary human construct has value because we have agreed collectively to subscribe value to it. The stronger the religion the strongest the construct. For bitcoin to become a dominant SoV we need to see some crypto talibans/missionaries/crusaders.
globalrobin00 8y ago
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globalrobin00 8y ago
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swfsql 8y ago
Fiat money is a century-old cult. Democracy is a cult. Lefty progressiveness is a cult. Bitcoining is a far less dangerous of a cult, because it's completely optional, it doesn't interacts with whom doesn't want it. Finally, just because some are having fun about mystery in a social network doesn't mean they are a cult. I myself think satoshi is probably dead (frozen) and will reborn in the future because bounty-hunters will demand his coins, some kind of long-way holder. This is just fun.
appleflaxen 8y ago
Cult: a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object. Religion: a pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance. yes; in this way it seems very much like the cult of any other currency that has no intrinsic value, but a population of people who are willing to accept it as a surrogate or bookkeeping symbol.
bitcoinisqueen 8y ago
> I have precious little hope for the future of projects that inspire this type of zealotry Good, then get lost and leave us alone in our cesspool of "zealotry". Bitcoin is a system of capitalism (vuluntary interactions) and the network gets secured by PoW via people's greed. Seems to be working to me.
toss1 8y ago
Interesting bit of spam on the forum from an account created ~2hours ago: >globalrobin00 35 minutes ago [-] > Are you from US, and have a verified coinbase account? > Then what are you waiting for when you can be earning up > to 0.5 > BTC weekly, with your empty verified coinbase > wallet. Contact +1-423-445-xxxx" Apparently seeking to 1) get around Know Your customer rules using your account or 2) escalate into your linked US bank accounts. Purpose 1) will land you in serious legal jeopardy for a mere ~70mBTC per day, while purpose 2) will drain your bank account at some point. Quite cheap compensation for being a sink for toxic side-effects of money laundering &/or theft.
dustinmoorenet 8y ago
I saw a t-shirt the other day that said "friends don't let friends sell bitcoins". At first I thought it was anti-bitcoin, but then I realized that they were advocating "hodl". Yeah feels like a cult to me.
wollw 8y ago
It's forced me to think a lot more about the material worth of our economy, specifically legal tender. I took a $20 Bank Note to the Coin Shop yesterday to trade ~1g of Cotton and Flax for a $1 Unit (~1oz of Silver) which I'll be tithing at Church this morning. The Nuts and Bolts of our economy started to get obscure when I got interested in Cryptocurrencies and I feel like I'm still recovering... From a certain perspective the copper traces in a Bitcoin Miner are worth more than any "coin" it produces and should sooner be melted down and turned into 1 Cent pieces so we can actually pass something that at least resembles Art around instead of just a secure Ledger.
X6S1x6Okd1st 8y ago
The way that people are reacting to 00000000000000000021e800c1e8df51b22c1588e5a624bea17e9faa34b2dc4a is really sad. The bit about people thinking that there is a sha256 preimage attack on a quantum computer is just icing on the ignorance cake.
apo 8y ago
The Bitcoin community has changed greatly over the years; from technophiles that could explain a Merkle tree in their sleep, to speculators driven by the desire for a quick profit & blockchain startups seeking billion dollar valuations led by people who don’t even know what a Merkle tree is. I'm not sure which version of history this guy was on, but it clearly hasn't been the one I followed. He's describing a past that never was. Read the old Bitcoin Talk posts. It took years for Bitcoin's technical ideas to become well-understood by even a fraction of the user base. Pick any year after 2010 and you'll find that the vast majority of Bitcoin users were in it to: (1) stick it to the man; (2) make a buck; or both. Interest in the technology itself motivates only a tiny fraction of users.
- btown 8y ago
  Technically, when the community was just Satoshi, what he said held true :)
  - zymhan 8y ago
    Is this really even worth saying? Saying you're being pedantic doesn't cover it.
- EliRivers 8y ago
  Given that he read the bitcoin white paper the day it was released and found it an interesting use of Merkle trees, I suspect that he's describing the past he experienced. When he read it, the community was such people.
- 21 8y ago
  I've been following bitcoin since 2012 and that is also my observation. It was always dollar is worthless and bitcoin is going to replace it, and drugs and assassination markets will run in the open fueled by bitcoin, no taxes will be paid anymore, and government will be powerless to stop any of this.
- acdha 8y ago
  > It took years for Bitcoin's technical ideas to become well-understood by even a fraction of the user base. That last part is the key qualifier for this line of criticism: there were quite a few people who were interested in the tech but also understood it and economics well enough not to become boosters.
aviv 8y ago
Bitcoin and other crypto currencies are not a store of value. They are a store of hype and momentum. Right now they have none, hence the steady decline.
m-i-l 8y ago
"Evolution is brutal, it requires death" The problem here is simple: people have too much money at stake now. The solution is not so simple, given this is a technology about money. But I do feel that it may be possible to learn from all of this, and preserve what is useful and use technology to eliminate the negative influence. For example, preserve the incentive mechanism for decentralising certain services (which could have genuine benefits for some use cases) while ensuring there isn't a publicly tradeable token or that if there is that it is protected by a stablecoin mechanism to prevent speculation. (Just one example.)
rawoke083600 8y ago
Thing about cults...(my opinion) it either works (crossfit etc) or is a lot of fun (church/sex cults) :P
lkrubner 8y ago
People in the West don't seem to realize how much Bitcoin is supported by Chinese businesses, and citizens, that are trying to evade their government's capital controls. Many people have an urgent desire to get money out of China, to invest it or spend it elsewhere. Bitcoin gives them a way to evade government regulations. This is why Bitcoin mining is such a big deal in China.
bogomipz 8y ago
I was curious about the following statement and am hoping someone could explain why: >"hashing is one thing that’s considered safe from quantum computers." Why is it safe? Is this because the number of cubits that will be available in the near future would be too small for something like SAH256? Something else entirely?

393 points by ccnafr 8y ago

znpy 8y ago

It really reminds me of this article: "Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution" ( https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths )

snek 8y ago

this elegantly summed up all my feelings on bitcoin; excellent read

Iv 8y ago

Bitcoin is a tool for tax evasion and money exchange on criminal assets. It turns out that also some geeks like to use it to bypass banks incompetence on international funds transfers but tax evasion is the use that drives BTC's value. The cult is just a small visible part of it but is a pretty minor aspect of it. BTC would exist without the cultists as long as Russian or Saudi assets need to be transfered without too much oversight.

prostoalex 8y ago
> BTC would exist without the cultists as long as Russian or Saudi assets need to be transfered without too much oversight Liquidity, though.
- askmike 8y ago
  Exactly: No crypto in it's current state is liquid enough for any serious moving of money. Slipping, fees (and potential hedging costs) will eat you if you need to to move serious money. As such it only works for entities who don't have vast amounts of capital, eg. people who can't afford an army of tax lawyers to create complex legal tax evasion schemes to pay less tax than the rest of us.
  - stryk 8y ago
    If I'm moving stolen money (or magic math coins or whatever) I don't give a damn about the fees - it's 100% profit either way. It costs money to have it laundered, whether that goes to a shady lawyer(s) or a Bitcoin processor who cares, it doesn't matter it's all profit for the thief.
    - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
      > I don't give a damn about the fees - it's 100% profit either way If I worked in your criminal enterprise, I'd could tell your deputies "look at this chump, throwing money away. I'll hire trucks to haul cash and boost our profits by 20%. Help me 'replace' the leader and I'll split those gains with you."
      - stryk 8y ago
        That's not how dirty money works if you want to get away with it. You need to launder it -- put it into something legitimate and, most importantly, get something back out of it that looks legitimate enough to pass casual scrutiny -- for this service anything and anyone, legit or not, is going to take a cut (or "fee"). It's the cost of doing criminal business. And if you're in a criminal enterprise and you even talk to the other members of the ent. about how you're going to move your money you ain't gonna be in the enterprise very long. That type of dirt you do by your lonesome or you die.
        JumpCrisscross 8y ago
        Needing to pay fees is different from not "giv[ing] a damn about the fees." I understand I have to pay a broker's fee when I buy and sell stock. That doesn't mean I'm indifferent to its level. Using Bitcoin to surreptitiously move large quantities of funds is almost always riskier and more expensive than traditional money-laundering techniques.
        stryk 8y ago
        And how may I ask did you come to this conclusion? Have you ever actually laundered dirty money?
mixmastamyk 8y ago
Would like to read more.
daturkel 8y ago
Do you have any sources for your claim that Bitcoin is used for large Russian/Saudi assets? It seems like the volume of BTC traded for illicit purposes is large in aggregate, but I'm not sure I've seen evidence of individual transfers being big. There are many ways that bad or unscrupulous actors can transfer money now that are actually less risky than Bitcoin.
- zhte415 8y ago
  I'm not commenting on the use of Bitcoin for Russian/Saudi interests, simply some information on Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing. Money Laundering tends to be smallish sums deposited over time, resulting in large amounts. You can't wash 100MM in one go. Terrosist Financing tends to be a very large number of small transactions from multiple global sources in a very short space of time into one account/wallet/location. Like crowd-sourcing, in fact exactly the same as crowd-sourcing. Less risky than Bitcoin? In the end you have to get it out of the blockchain to be useful, so that's where the pointers from a law-enforcement perspecive are.
  - omeid2 8y ago
    I have zero interest in Bitcoin, but the idea that terrorists finance happens through cryptocurrency is very naive. Terrorism is sponsored on the ground, with goods, not money that you have to convert to some other money first, and then buy things you need.
    - zhte415 8y ago
      This is correct. International funding does happen. Funds travel across regions, countries, territoritories, very quickly, to enable the passing of goods on the ground.
- Iv 8y ago
  Look at the BTC price fluctuations when another round of sanctions is added on Russia, when Cyprus cracked down on tax evaders or wduring the Saudi corruption crackdown. Everytime it peaks.
zeth___ 8y ago
A rather odd tool for tax evasion that has a record of the evaded tax for all eternity. It is vastly easier to launder money through regular channels than through a method that by it's definition records every transaction.
ComputerGuru 8y ago
That’s media sensationalism. BTC is not remotely anonymous and is useless as a tax evasion mechanism. Your money still has to go through someone to turn into BTC, and that’s the same as any other money laundering operation. Once their books are audited, your “safe haven” is worth nothing.
- LateRuin 8y ago
  Vice has a good video on drug dealers lining up to use a Bitcoin ATM every day somewhere in an American ghetto. Bitcoin is 100% about drug dealing, gambling, and tax avoidance. You would have to be a total moron to go through all the hoops to use it otherwise. Its kinda like running desktop linux in that way.
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    A lot of Bitcoin volume is criminal in nature. What is contested is that a large fraction of criminal fund flows go through Bitcoin. For the same reasons it sucks for individuals (volatile, slow, expensive, publicly recorded, difficult to spend and difficult to convert), it sucks for criminals.
  - scrollaway 8y ago
    > You would have to be a total moron to go through all the hoops to use it otherwise. Its kinda like running desktop linux in that way. So, what, you'd have to be a total moron to go through the hoops of installing Linux as well? Do you think before you comment? Your 100% figure is wrong given that I, at least, don't match any of your description. You can't go around claiming this kind of nonsense.
  - askmike 8y ago
    In most countries there are no hoops. In most places in Europe it's harder go get a bank account than to get bitcoin. Does that mean only morons go through all the hoops of obtaining bank accounts?
- simias 8y ago
  I don't completely agree, you can move BTC around, mix it and exchange it for other cryptocurrencies while leaving only a very small trail. You don't have to involve other people directly, you don't have to carry duffel-bags of cash across borders etc... Of course if your money starts in your "books" before being converted into cryptocurrency then yeah, it's useless. But that's not the use case, it's more about laundering money that's not in the books to begin with (corruption, black market, undeclared sales etc...). I believe that right now the main deterrent to this scenario is the same reason people don't use cryptocurrencies for legit use cases: it's wildly unstable and you have to convert it to dollars or some other "fiat" to do anything with it.
swfsql 8y ago
>Bitcoin is a tool for tax evasion and money exchange on criminal assets You just made it more appealing and useful, since taxation is theft. Some "criminal" assets are incorrectly classified as criminal, so that's another +1 for Bitcoin.

maym86 8y ago

I don't disagree but isn't this true for the popularization of any technology. First it's just the nerds then come the less informed masses who don't fully understand the details along with the people trying to make money out of that fact.

mlinksva 8y ago
https://digitopoly.org/2018/06/21/the-paradox-of-technological-deja-vu/ https://digitopoly.org/2018/06/21/the-paradox-of-technologic... sort of takes that point of view.
eksemplar 8y ago
I think crypto is different in the way it actually doesn’t do anything. Bitcoin has been around for 9 years and you have never been able to use bitcoin as a currency fewer places than you can now.
- Taek 8y ago
  9 years is not very long for an emerging technology. AI has been around since the 60's. Arpanet was established in 1969. Electricity was relatively well understood in 1750 (we had batteries that could store electrical charge) but the electric lightbulb wasn't invented until more than 100 years later. Bitcoin is very early, it's core infrastructure, it's going to take time to get established, and once it does get established it's going to change society as much as electricity did.
  - eksemplar 8y ago
    I work in the public sector, we’ve done quite a few proof of concepts on blockchain over the years, because we have actual use cases where a decentralized system makes sense. Like land registry, keeping bi-temporal records and case flows where citizens can follow their progress from home. We’ve yet to make it work though. Decentralized voting is too vulnerable and mining is too anti-climate, so it’s really all turning out to a big pile of nothing. My colleagues in banking are running into the same issues. The only place I’ve seen blockchain put to good use is at Maersk, who runs their claims of ownership on the tech. Because of port corruption, the claim of ownership linked to a container is more expensive to ship than the container itself, even though it’s a single a4 document. Their blockchain isn’t really decentralized though. By comparison the arpanet had an instant use case, so did electricity. They took time to spread, like everything new does, but they are very different from the blockchain in the way they weren’t searching for a reason to exist.

shobith 8y ago

Any network-effect driven product is a cult.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> Any network-effect driven product is a cult "The term cult usually refers to a social group defined by its religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs, or its common interest in a particular personality, object or goal" [1]. Membership connotes devotion. That is different from network effects. For example, telephones benefit from network effects. Buying a telephone does not join one onto a cult. (Buying Bitcoin, alone, does not admit one into a cult, either. It’s the behaviour of the community around Bitcoin that exhibits cult-like tendencies.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult
- xiphias 8y ago
  Bitcoin has less than 0.1% adoption rate, I can imagine that people who bought telephones at 0.1% adoption rate had a common interest.
- shobith 8y ago
  > Buying Bitcoin, alone, does not admit one into a cult, either. It’s the behaviour of the community around Bitcoin that exhibits cult-like tendencies. In that case, is Bitcoin really a cult? or is there a cult that is using Bitcoin?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
scarejunba 8y ago
Like telephones? Since cancelling your cell phone plan will effectively cut you off from your parents?
shobith 8y ago
small correction: s/is/starts out as/g To the telephone counter-examples in the responses: early telephone users were probably "culty" until the mainstream adopted it for useful stuff.

awt 8y ago

Bitcoin is a cult. Altcoins are cargo cults.

Nursie 8y ago
Altcoins are exactly the same
- awt 8y ago
  That's what the Papua New Guineans thought.
  - Nursie 8y ago
    But in this case they have the planes too.
- Izkata 8y ago
  I think that's the idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_programming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_programming > Cargo cult programming is a style of computer programming characterized by the ritual inclusion of code or program structures that serve no real purpose. > Cargo cult programming can also refer to the practice of applying a design pattern or coding style blindly without understanding the reasons behind that design principle.
  - Nursie 8y ago
    I don't really believe those apply here - they're the same and they're supposed to be, and they function the same. The level of understanding is largely irrelevant.
- hnisgroupthink 8y ago
  Altcoins are setup to be differentiated or killed by market forces.

sidkhanooja 8y ago

r/bitcoin comes to mind whenever I think of the words "Bitcoin" and "cult" in the same sentence.

shiado 8y ago
If you want to read an interesting story read this. https://old.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/6rxw7k/informative_btc_vs_bch_articles/dl8v4lp/ https://old.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/6rxw7k/info...
- SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
  Good overview, a lot of stuff I didn’t know. What I do know and have known is that anyone that believes the “it’s decentralized” part about any cryptocommodity is a damn fool. The database might be but nothing else. There are at any time a dozen people that could utterly destroy bitcoin with some well placed shenanigans.
  - sparkie 8y ago
    The shit you read on reddit is full of conspiracy theorist nonsense, and completely detached from Bitcoin development. Development is done and discussed in the open on mailing lists, github etc, and is subject to community review. There's a process outlined in BIP2 for any (non-trivial code) changes to the Bitcoin Core software. Of course, anyone can fork the software and make complaints publicly if there was malicious intent from the Core developers. There are a lot of people who have money invested in Bitcoin, and keep a close eye on the developments occurring.
    - SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
      I didn’t read anything on reddit. If you believe bitcoin can’t be crashed by a handful bad actors I fully encourage you to put your 401K in.
      - 8y ago

jaequery 8y ago

can someone name one successful startup that actually utilizes the blockchain to do something they couldnt have done without?

Taek 8y ago
well, you may not call Sia successful (a cloud storage network with 200 TB of data being actively stored on it), but it uses blockchain to achieve something that it could not achieve without.
- quonn 8y ago
  That‘s very little data. And besides it could, of course, be done completely without blockchain even if the data is stored decentralised.
  - Taek 8y ago
    Sia works without any centralized orchestration, enabling you to safely use financially incentivized hosts without needing to know who they are, and allowing you to know that that only get paid if they store your data as promised. The hosts also can be guaranteed that they get paid even if the renter disappears, and you can't achieve those things without a blockchain.
basejumping 8y ago
Coinbase?
- gitgud 8y ago
  Yeah, it seems the most successful crypto businesses are basically crypto exchanges for trading crypto...
  - the_cat_kittles 8y ago
    in a gold rush, sell shovels!

Obi_Juan_Kenobi 8y ago

There is, without a doubt, a Bitcoin cult. Or more generally, crypto-currency cults. The headline reads like it's only a cult, which isn't the case. Even the most critical observer must concede that these distributed networks are novel and interesting. The farther you move from social media, the less cult-like things get. The best discussion remains on listservs, and there is a lot of interesting and substantive discussion occurring.

tekromancr 8y ago
If you don't mind me asking, what are some listservs worth reading?
- plankers 8y ago
  The bitcoin-dev mailing list is quite technical, but can be quite amusing when egos begin to clash. https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-d...
jenga22 8y ago
A lot of things are cults and it doesn't have to do much with social media or the behaviors he is outlining. Apple - You can argue Apple, the hardware company, is a cult. The fans are rabid in their support for the company. Often the discussions are not at all civil and in this particular case there is no financial incentive. Let's move even farther away. There are cults for clothing companies. Companies that make drinks. Gaming companies. Youtube streamers. Heck, there even cults in processor companies. Take for example AMD. I have had chats with people who just get livid when Intel vs. AMD conversations come up and I am thinking to myself "We are talking about CPUs right?". There are even cults with Operating Systems. Just ask the nix vs. Windows folks. Those discussions get heated. So I am not sure what he is trying to argue here. There will always be folks developing who will have a civil discourse and try to make the currency better and then there will be the peanut gallery. That comes with anything that gains wider exposure.
- 8y ago

btcobserve 8y ago

Is the cult supported by artificial means? Often when cryptos including BTC drop, Tether amount goes up. They have expanded a lot since last year. Can they keep this up? How much Tether can they print?

Permit 8y ago

I think people have largely missed the point of the article. This is specifically in relation to a "magic hash" on a block that was mined on June 19, 2018 with the hash: 00000000000000000021e800c1e8df51b22c1588e5a624bea17e9faa34b2dc4a The leading zeros are the "proof-of-work". The bitcoin mining algorithm tries various nonces and generates many hashes until it finds one with (currently) 18 leading zeros. Surprisingly, much of the Bitcoin community doesn't know this and think that the leading zeros are special. The 21e800 is supposedly 'special' because it relates to the E8 'Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything'. A physics theory proposing a basis for unified field theory. Anyways, people have mistakenly calculated the odds of such an occurrence and believe it to be exceedingly rare. They are claiming that someone must have left it there and that it is either the result of: 1. A quantum computer 2. Time travelling 3. Something related to the Bible This doesn't really make sense and we can calculate the odds ourselves. It works out to roughly 3%. (1 - ((16^6 - 1) / (16^6)) ^ 500,000 blocks) = 0.03. There are 18 hashes with the leading non-zero digits 21e8 There are 3 hashes with the leading non-zero digits 21e80 There are many other "vanity hashes": (57ea1 or steal) https://blockchain.info/block/000000000057ea16558140e0b3995aef6dd2641624e1c790acf78424ce4e4b83 https://blockchain.info/block/000000000057ea16558140e0b3995a... (1055e5 or losses) https://blockchain.info/block/00000000001055e54d1d11bae837d58b1b5887947c0af9147b7418675d5198b5 https://blockchain.info/block/00000000001055e54d1d11bae837d5... These things are not rare, but as mentioned in the article, people have ascribed a sort of religious aspect to them. It's really weird. I also wrote about this today. If you're interested in some of the other weird responses see: https://medium.com/@thisisjoshvarty/lets-talk-about-hashes-or-00000000000000000021e800c1e8df51b22c1588e5a624bea17e9faa34b2dc4a-b8d8c8fb4e94 https://medium.com/@thisisjoshvarty/lets-talk-about-hashes-o...

SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
Great comment. My counter for people that may have misunderstood it before your post is that... if these people think 3% and “magic” occurrences of leetspeak are something note these are people I want to keep myself and my money far away from.
- sdrothrock 8y ago

Synaesthesia 8y ago

When I first got into bitcoin I thought it could be a wonderful alternative to the current monetary system, I especially hoped it would be more equitably shares. Unfortunately it’s turned out to be as unequally shared as our current wealth is, if not more. Perhaps some kind of coin where everybody in the world is issued the same amount or something.

SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
>Perhaps some kind of coin where everybody in the world is issued the same amount or something. That’s an interesting idea for how a currency would work and I’m half tempted to ask you to explain if everyone had the same where is the value in it... but more tempted to suggest you develope a currency based on human fingers as most of us start with the same number.
- ianai 8y ago
  One idea I’ve had and heard similar descriptions of elsewhere is to give people grants for various things. Ie. If you’re diagnosed with skin cancer you’re given a grant to fund the treatment. There’d have to be an algorithm in place to settle on the optimum grant - and I don’t claim to know it. Maybe it’s a grant that establishes a reimbursement contract between the service provider, the government, and the patient with an allotment for a maximal amount of profit. But giving people blocks of money is compatible with the capitalistic market. They would still have to choose how to spend their stipend(s) and the associated trade offs. I liken it to filling in missing data with the average value. Making sure everyone made at least the average per capita income wouldn’t change inflation, I think.
- bitcoinisqueen 8y ago
  80% of people will spend/lose money right away. The reason people have no money, is because of the power of their habits and their lack of imagination and discipline. Money is merely s measurement tool that reflects your captured reciprocal altruism (or piracy of course). Tons of "poor people" regularly blow $100's/month on drugs such as caffeine, tobacco, beer or even illegal drugs and lottery tickets. Others will extend themselves with shiny clothes and new cars. It's frankly hilarious and apalling at the same time. Primary reason: predatory governments who make you spend 12 years in school and teach little to nothing of finance/value creation.

yipbub 8y ago

I've thinking of how many of the communities and belief systems on the internet are very similar to religions. I've started calling conspiracy theories the "religions of the internet" to make a point to my dad whose understandable distrust of the mainstream narrative has lead him to give more trust to the anti-establishment churches like https://themindunleashed.com https://themindunleashed.com that publish conspiracy theories, badly informed opinions on real science news, and pseudo-science mixed in with some real science news. His reaction to mistrusting the mainstream was to shift his trust somewhere easily identifiable as untrustworthy (to someone educated in the sciences) atleast partly because it acknowledges his mistrust of the mainstream and presents the only-mostly-wrong ideas in a fleshed out manner and authoritative tone. Some observations and layman speculation: I've just started reading Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harrari which suggests that there is a strong biological tendency toward adopting unsubstantiated beliefs to enable human cooperation at scale he called them collective myths. I've also once met a sincere flat earther, but I suspect his ideas arose from doing too much LSD before encountering the idea of tracing his beliefs to their root axioms.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

geraldbauer 8y ago

Thanks for speaking out. I've collected some anti bitcoin-propaganda - titled best of bitcoin maximalist [1] and crypto facts - true or false? [2] in free online booklets among others. [1] https://bitsblocks.github.io/bitcoin-maximalist https://bitsblocks.github.io/bitcoin-maximalist [2] https://bitsblocks.github.io/crypto-facts https://bitsblocks.github.io/crypto-facts

arisAlexis 8y ago

first time in history innovative tech with tangible benefits is called a cult. bitcoin hating is more of a cult

justatdotin 8y ago

yeah but $US is a Cult

krrrh 8y ago
It's a cult backed by taxing authority and police powers of a country. Basically what we call a national currency, but sure, muddy the waters.

Myrmornis 8y ago

Seems a silly article. The fact that bitcoin has attracted some idiots is entirely consistent with the hypothesis that bitcoin is a great success, and destined for continued success and not at all a cult.

phobosdeimos 8y ago

Bitcoin is for the paranoid and conspiracy theorists. The argument crypto currency supporters have is always Venezuela or the European banking crisis (hilarious because citizens didn't actually lose any money). If our banking system DOES collapse your crypto wallet won't save you.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> Bitcoin is for the paranoid and conspiracy theorists I would wager a small fraction of technically-literate paranoids and conspiracy theorists own Bitcoin. More plausible: people with some other tendency buy and then, when asked for an explanation, rationalise with conspiracy theory-like reasoning. (My guess for the tendency: gambling affinity.)
swfsql 8y ago
Venezuela citizens didn't lose any money? are you serious? So you must be happy, since most Venezuelans may be millionaires now! (but let's just forget about the fact that 1M+ from their currency is valued as less than a dollar; and that this value loss have destroyed their lives)
- phobosdeimos 8y ago
  Venezuela is irrelevant to the situation in most of the world, its an outlier. Thats why it is a stupid argument for bitcoin. It would be like preparing for volcanoes in Denmark. Besides they are using USD and foreign banks in Venezuela not crypto currency. The rich in Venezuela haven't lost a cent I am willing to bet. And last but not least: bitcoin doesn't solve a single systemic problem Venezuela has. Its a corrupt failed state that could have been a South American Norway. Technology won't save it.
  - swfsql 8y ago
    >Venezuela is irrelevant (..) so are your thoughts about Bitcoin from their (those whose lives were saved because of cryptos) point of view, obviously. >Besides they are using USD A few may. But in such violent place, saving cryptos is cheaper than saving in any (physical) cash. Easier to trade as well, since banking is not THAT accessible and illegal USD trading have its safety's costs. >bitcoin doesn't solve a single systemic problem Venezuela has. all fiat is a systemic problem. According to Austrian School of Economics. Don't get me wrong, I'm not appealing to authority or anything. This is not meant for you. Someone might read our comments, care to actually know what's going on and look further into it.

PanosJee 8y ago

The author is wrong as in presenting the cult as a flaw. Every imaginary human construct has value because we have agreed collectively to subscribe value to it. The stronger the religion the strongest the construct. For bitcoin to become a dominant SoV we need to see some crypto talibans/missionaries/crusaders.

globalrobin00 8y ago

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globalrobin00 8y ago

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swfsql 8y ago

Fiat money is a century-old cult. Democracy is a cult. Lefty progressiveness is a cult. Bitcoining is a far less dangerous of a cult, because it's completely optional, it doesn't interacts with whom doesn't want it. Finally, just because some are having fun about mystery in a social network doesn't mean they are a cult. I myself think satoshi is probably dead (frozen) and will reborn in the future because bounty-hunters will demand his coins, some kind of long-way holder. This is just fun.

appleflaxen 8y ago

Cult: a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object. Religion: a pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance. yes; in this way it seems very much like the cult of any other currency that has no intrinsic value, but a population of people who are willing to accept it as a surrogate or bookkeeping symbol.

bitcoinisqueen 8y ago

> I have precious little hope for the future of projects that inspire this type of zealotry Good, then get lost and leave us alone in our cesspool of "zealotry". Bitcoin is a system of capitalism (vuluntary interactions) and the network gets secured by PoW via people's greed. Seems to be working to me.

toss1 8y ago

Interesting bit of spam on the forum from an account created ~2hours ago: >globalrobin00 35 minutes ago [-] > Are you from US, and have a verified coinbase account? > Then what are you waiting for when you can be earning up > to 0.5 > BTC weekly, with your empty verified coinbase > wallet. Contact +1-423-445-xxxx" Apparently seeking to 1) get around Know Your customer rules using your account or 2) escalate into your linked US bank accounts. Purpose 1) will land you in serious legal jeopardy for a mere ~70mBTC per day, while purpose 2) will drain your bank account at some point. Quite cheap compensation for being a sink for toxic side-effects of money laundering &/or theft.

dustinmoorenet 8y ago

I saw a t-shirt the other day that said "friends don't let friends sell bitcoins". At first I thought it was anti-bitcoin, but then I realized that they were advocating "hodl". Yeah feels like a cult to me.

wollw 8y ago

It's forced me to think a lot more about the material worth of our economy, specifically legal tender. I took a $20 Bank Note to the Coin Shop yesterday to trade ~1g of Cotton and Flax for a $1 Unit (~1oz of Silver) which I'll be tithing at Church this morning. The Nuts and Bolts of our economy started to get obscure when I got interested in Cryptocurrencies and I feel like I'm still recovering... From a certain perspective the copper traces in a Bitcoin Miner are worth more than any "coin" it produces and should sooner be melted down and turned into 1 Cent pieces so we can actually pass something that at least resembles Art around instead of just a secure Ledger.

X6S1x6Okd1st 8y ago

The way that people are reacting to 00000000000000000021e800c1e8df51b22c1588e5a624bea17e9faa34b2dc4a is really sad. The bit about people thinking that there is a sha256 preimage attack on a quantum computer is just icing on the ignorance cake.

apo 8y ago

The Bitcoin community has changed greatly over the years; from technophiles that could explain a Merkle tree in their sleep, to speculators driven by the desire for a quick profit & blockchain startups seeking billion dollar valuations led by people who don’t even know what a Merkle tree is. I'm not sure which version of history this guy was on, but it clearly hasn't been the one I followed. He's describing a past that never was. Read the old Bitcoin Talk posts. It took years for Bitcoin's technical ideas to become well-understood by even a fraction of the user base. Pick any year after 2010 and you'll find that the vast majority of Bitcoin users were in it to: (1) stick it to the man; (2) make a buck; or both. Interest in the technology itself motivates only a tiny fraction of users.

btown 8y ago
Technically, when the community was just Satoshi, what he said held true :)
- zymhan 8y ago
  Is this really even worth saying? Saying you're being pedantic doesn't cover it.
EliRivers 8y ago
Given that he read the bitcoin white paper the day it was released and found it an interesting use of Merkle trees, I suspect that he's describing the past he experienced. When he read it, the community was such people.
21 8y ago
I've been following bitcoin since 2012 and that is also my observation. It was always dollar is worthless and bitcoin is going to replace it, and drugs and assassination markets will run in the open fueled by bitcoin, no taxes will be paid anymore, and government will be powerless to stop any of this.
acdha 8y ago
> It took years for Bitcoin's technical ideas to become well-understood by even a fraction of the user base. That last part is the key qualifier for this line of criticism: there were quite a few people who were interested in the tech but also understood it and economics well enough not to become boosters.

aviv 8y ago

Bitcoin and other crypto currencies are not a store of value. They are a store of hype and momentum. Right now they have none, hence the steady decline.

m-i-l 8y ago

"Evolution is brutal, it requires death" The problem here is simple: people have too much money at stake now. The solution is not so simple, given this is a technology about money. But I do feel that it may be possible to learn from all of this, and preserve what is useful and use technology to eliminate the negative influence. For example, preserve the incentive mechanism for decentralising certain services (which could have genuine benefits for some use cases) while ensuring there isn't a publicly tradeable token or that if there is that it is protected by a stablecoin mechanism to prevent speculation. (Just one example.)

rawoke083600 8y ago

Thing about cults...(my opinion) it either works (crossfit etc) or is a lot of fun (church/sex cults) :P

lkrubner 8y ago

People in the West don't seem to realize how much Bitcoin is supported by Chinese businesses, and citizens, that are trying to evade their government's capital controls. Many people have an urgent desire to get money out of China, to invest it or spend it elsewhere. Bitcoin gives them a way to evade government regulations. This is why Bitcoin mining is such a big deal in China.

bogomipz 8y ago

I was curious about the following statement and am hoping someone could explain why: >"hashing is one thing that’s considered safe from quantum computers." Why is it safe? Is this because the number of cubits that will be available in the near future would be too small for something like SAH256? Something else entirely?