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I find it amusing that media doesn't give a crap about Bitcoin until there's price action. This was the exact same type of article that was dominating headlines

by cal5k 7y ago

I find it amusing that media doesn't give a crap about Bitcoin until there's price action. This was the exact same type of article that was dominating headlines back in the 2017 run-up. Bitcoin has proved remarkably resilient over the last 10 years. It's clear (to me, anyway) that this asset class/set of technologies is here to stay, it's really just a question of what comes of it. It's actually quite useful to be able to send large quantities of money anywhere in the world without needing a series of intermediaries. For that purpose alone I could see supply limitations leading to increased prices in the long haul. There are also some interesting "layer 2" projects that have been percolating for several years now with a lot of potential to make Bitcoin useful for smaller transactions. The insane hype of the last cycle understandably turned a lot of people off from crypto, but I think it would be a mistake to ignore the progress that's being made.

LiquidSky 7y ago
>Bitcoin has proved remarkably resilient over the last 10 years. What does that even mean? Resilient in what way? As this article notes, it hasn't been adopted for use in any meaningful or significant way. It's a speculation vehicle. I guess in the sense that it didn't literally disappear it's resilient, but beyond that the idea from its early days that it would fundamentally change the world and be widely adopted is gone. It's not the glorious dagger that will pierce the heart of the statist beast its libertarian boosters imagined. The governments, banks, and people of the world have mostly shrugged at it. Ironically, some banks and governments even started adopting the technology for their own uses. It's just a vehicle for speculation and a toy that doesn't seem to have any actually useful applications that couldn't have already been done better. >I think it would be a mistake to ignore the progress that's being made. What progress? It made some speculators rich but is otherwise useless.
- cal5k 7y ago
  Resilient as in despite 10 years of continuous doomsday prognostications, Bitcoin continues to be traded and used around the world. And 1 BTC, this thing that didn't exist 10 years ago, is now worth $8,422.40 USD. As for utility: I've used it to pay contractors in Europe, for example, without having to figure out which money transmittal service is going to rip me off the least. Tons of expats living in North America and Europe use it to send money back to family in their home countries. People use it to hedge against runaway inflation caused by poor monetary policy. It could all fall apart in a few years, sure, but it's damn interesting. Being cynical just means if you're right you get to gloat about it, but if you're wrong you're missing something that could be really important.
  - Frondo 7y ago
    The problem I think a lot of people have with Bitcoin, at least that ends up producing articles like this, is that there's always a tremendous amount of goalpost-shifting in the Bitcoin/adjacent community. At times it's been talked about as a replacement for cash in the sense of using it for lots of low-value transactions (it won't work), as a value store (it fluctuates a LOT for that), for sending money across borders (absolutely dwarfed by Western Union), for replacing Paypal/Venmo/Google Wallet/any other electronic payment system (absolutely dwarfed any of those), and so on. It's not dead, of course, but the Bitcoin community has made a LOT of strong claims about widespread public adoption, yet still remains very much in the hands of speculators and hobbyists. That's what, I think, a lot of the objections come from. Bitcoin's like the Segway in a sense; did it change the world? in some small way, yes. Are we building cities (or large-scale financial infrastructures) around it? Well, show me.
    - cal5k 7y ago
      Well, I think nobody knows exactly what it is yet. It's an emerging technology, so even if there's a great deal of utility it's not surprising that predictions will be off the mark/downright wrong, and that opportunities will be missed that eventually seem obvious in retrospect. And there is no cohesive "community" that's making predictions and measuring against them. It's just people speculating out loud, and then other people writing about the speculation. It's a bit unusual because it started out as a cool technological curiosity vs. a product with a defined product/market fit. Sort of like desktop computing in the 70s.
      - Balgair 7y ago
        > Resilient as in despite 10 years of continuous doomsday prognostications, > It's an emerging technology, What are the timelines like here? If 10 years is too short to suss out what BTC is going to be useful for, will another 10 years help? Is this a 100 year long thing then?
        cal5k 7y ago
- api 7y ago
  There is a market for speculation, black and grey market finance, and gambling that will always give Bitcoin and other deflationary type cryptocurrencies value. People will "play" in these markets just like they play in casinos. The question is how much value and how realistic current numbers are. I have little doubt that if say 5% of BTC holders tried to cash in the price in USD would crash hard. Cryptocurrency in a broader sense is an emerging technology and will probably find other areas of utility. I feel like we don't even know what it is yet.
- cryptica 7y ago
  >> It's a speculation vehicle So is everything else. Investors buy company shares to make a profit; they don't buy the shares for any other reason. In a world where practically every person only cares about capturing value and almost none of them care about creating value, everything is speculation. Everything is just smoke and mirrors.
thekyle 7y ago
> It's actually quite useful to be able to send large quantities of money anywhere in the world without needing a series of intermediaries. The problem is that the vast majority of businesses do not accept Bitcoin and right now Bitcoin is too volatile to store value/buying power. This means that for all practical purposes you need to exchange your local currency for Bitcoin, send it somewhere, then convert it back to fiat currency. That means you require at least 2 intermediaries. Not to mention I would have a hard time trusting any reasonable amount of money to most Bitcoin exchanges.
bartimus 7y ago
It's exactly now running into its hardcoded bandwidth limit again: https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactions.html#6m https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactions.ht...
sireat 7y ago
What kind of progress has been made in crypto currency adoption? After 10 years there really is nothing to show for it. I mined a few coins in 2011 and they were quite useful in the 2013 boom when there were various merchants experimenting with adoption. Since then the merchant adoption has only gone down. Bitcoin will continue to have value because of its use in very shady transactions: * hard drugs * avoiding capital controls(China, Russia etc) * extortion, blackmail * crypto scams * pure speculative/gambling vehicle Sadly, there is no cryptocurrency which is useful as a general purpose e-money. That is: as a buyer you get no protection and pay more as compared to regular credit card. Why in the world would you use it unless you want to use it for something shady? Now one could argue that capital controls and hard drugs should be legal but that doesn't change the problem that bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies only exist to serve markets that nation states deem illegal. Compare this to regular gold and cash. Finally, the big problem is the energy use. If BTC runs to 50k-100k then the energy consumption used for mining will surely surpass that of a medium sized country. If speculators push the price of BTC to say 500k, then the whole world will stop and half the energy will be used to mine BTC. It is ridiculously silly yet dangerous.
erfgh 7y ago
How the hell it is resilient? I also have a website that I coded 6 years ago and it still keeps running on a server somewhere for its 50 users. Do you find that "remarkably resilient", too?

by cal5k 7y ago

LiquidSky 7y ago

>Bitcoin has proved remarkably resilient over the last 10 years. What does that even mean? Resilient in what way? As this article notes, it hasn't been adopted for use in any meaningful or significant way. It's a speculation vehicle. I guess in the sense that it didn't literally disappear it's resilient, but beyond that the idea from its early days that it would fundamentally change the world and be widely adopted is gone. It's not the glorious dagger that will pierce the heart of the statist beast its libertarian boosters imagined. The governments, banks, and people of the world have mostly shrugged at it. Ironically, some banks and governments even started adopting the technology for their own uses. It's just a vehicle for speculation and a toy that doesn't seem to have any actually useful applications that couldn't have already been done better. >I think it would be a mistake to ignore the progress that's being made. What progress? It made some speculators rich but is otherwise useless.

cal5k 7y ago
Resilient as in despite 10 years of continuous doomsday prognostications, Bitcoin continues to be traded and used around the world. And 1 BTC, this thing that didn't exist 10 years ago, is now worth $8,422.40 USD. As for utility: I've used it to pay contractors in Europe, for example, without having to figure out which money transmittal service is going to rip me off the least. Tons of expats living in North America and Europe use it to send money back to family in their home countries. People use it to hedge against runaway inflation caused by poor monetary policy. It could all fall apart in a few years, sure, but it's damn interesting. Being cynical just means if you're right you get to gloat about it, but if you're wrong you're missing something that could be really important.
- Frondo 7y ago
  The problem I think a lot of people have with Bitcoin, at least that ends up producing articles like this, is that there's always a tremendous amount of goalpost-shifting in the Bitcoin/adjacent community. At times it's been talked about as a replacement for cash in the sense of using it for lots of low-value transactions (it won't work), as a value store (it fluctuates a LOT for that), for sending money across borders (absolutely dwarfed by Western Union), for replacing Paypal/Venmo/Google Wallet/any other electronic payment system (absolutely dwarfed any of those), and so on. It's not dead, of course, but the Bitcoin community has made a LOT of strong claims about widespread public adoption, yet still remains very much in the hands of speculators and hobbyists. That's what, I think, a lot of the objections come from. Bitcoin's like the Segway in a sense; did it change the world? in some small way, yes. Are we building cities (or large-scale financial infrastructures) around it? Well, show me.
  - cal5k 7y ago
    Well, I think nobody knows exactly what it is yet. It's an emerging technology, so even if there's a great deal of utility it's not surprising that predictions will be off the mark/downright wrong, and that opportunities will be missed that eventually seem obvious in retrospect. And there is no cohesive "community" that's making predictions and measuring against them. It's just people speculating out loud, and then other people writing about the speculation. It's a bit unusual because it started out as a cool technological curiosity vs. a product with a defined product/market fit. Sort of like desktop computing in the 70s.
    - Balgair 7y ago
      > Resilient as in despite 10 years of continuous doomsday prognostications, > It's an emerging technology, What are the timelines like here? If 10 years is too short to suss out what BTC is going to be useful for, will another 10 years help? Is this a 100 year long thing then?
      - cal5k 7y ago
api 7y ago
There is a market for speculation, black and grey market finance, and gambling that will always give Bitcoin and other deflationary type cryptocurrencies value. People will "play" in these markets just like they play in casinos. The question is how much value and how realistic current numbers are. I have little doubt that if say 5% of BTC holders tried to cash in the price in USD would crash hard. Cryptocurrency in a broader sense is an emerging technology and will probably find other areas of utility. I feel like we don't even know what it is yet.
cryptica 7y ago
>> It's a speculation vehicle So is everything else. Investors buy company shares to make a profit; they don't buy the shares for any other reason. In a world where practically every person only cares about capturing value and almost none of them care about creating value, everything is speculation. Everything is just smoke and mirrors.

thekyle 7y ago

> It's actually quite useful to be able to send large quantities of money anywhere in the world without needing a series of intermediaries. The problem is that the vast majority of businesses do not accept Bitcoin and right now Bitcoin is too volatile to store value/buying power. This means that for all practical purposes you need to exchange your local currency for Bitcoin, send it somewhere, then convert it back to fiat currency. That means you require at least 2 intermediaries. Not to mention I would have a hard time trusting any reasonable amount of money to most Bitcoin exchanges.

bartimus 7y ago

It's exactly now running into its hardcoded bandwidth limit again: https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactions.html#6m https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactions.ht...

sireat 7y ago

What kind of progress has been made in crypto currency adoption? After 10 years there really is nothing to show for it. I mined a few coins in 2011 and they were quite useful in the 2013 boom when there were various merchants experimenting with adoption. Since then the merchant adoption has only gone down. Bitcoin will continue to have value because of its use in very shady transactions: * hard drugs * avoiding capital controls(China, Russia etc) * extortion, blackmail * crypto scams * pure speculative/gambling vehicle Sadly, there is no cryptocurrency which is useful as a general purpose e-money. That is: as a buyer you get no protection and pay more as compared to regular credit card. Why in the world would you use it unless you want to use it for something shady? Now one could argue that capital controls and hard drugs should be legal but that doesn't change the problem that bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies only exist to serve markets that nation states deem illegal. Compare this to regular gold and cash. Finally, the big problem is the energy use. If BTC runs to 50k-100k then the energy consumption used for mining will surely surpass that of a medium sized country. If speculators push the price of BTC to say 500k, then the whole world will stop and half the energy will be used to mine BTC. It is ridiculously silly yet dangerous.

erfgh 7y ago

How the hell it is resilient? I also have a website that I coded 6 years ago and it still keeps running on a server somewhere for its 50 users. Do you find that "remarkably resilient", too?