8 ms·

Could you elaborate on what Bitcoin failed at?

by sins 7y ago

ianai 7y ago
Conception. It’s pitched as a replacement for government backed, fiat currency. But I’ve never heard or seen a convincing, coherent explanation that makes it clear this is a currency. For one, a currency can’t be reliant on an internet connection for validity. My 1$ bill in my wallet absolutely does not rely on that. In fact, there’s an entire country validating that dollars usefulness. A gold coin essentially answers the usual doubts in fiat currency.
- lawn 7y ago
  > But I’ve never heard or seen a convincing, coherent explanation that makes it clear this is a currency Cryptocurrencies is a better type of money for a few reasons: * More acceptable than other digital money (banks and payment processors might say no) * More easily divisible than for example gold coins and gold bars * It's sound money whereas fiat is not (nobody can arbitrarily increase the supply) * Much more portable. You can send any amount to anyone in the world, as long as they have internet. To be clear, cryptocurrencies are like cash but in digital form. It's a great medium exchange, but it suffers from low adoption meaning it's a bad store of value (but so is fiat) and a bad unit of account (but so is gold). > For one, a currency can’t be reliant on an internet connection for validity. My 1$ bill in my wallet absolutely does not rely on that So you don't consider digital fiat currencies then? Me not having internet for a period of time doesn't invalidate my cryptocurrency holdings. I just need internet to spend it (a fair constraint for digital money). > A gold coin essentially answers the usual doubts in fiat currency. Except for the fact that you can't send gold coins digitally. Also, it's much more difficult to check for gold coins. And difficult to transport. It's easy with cryptocurrencies.
  - ianai 7y ago
    Here’s an interesting discussion of why a fixed currency supply hinders the market from clearing (and other ailments) https://economics.stackexchange.com/questions/166/from-an-economics-perspective-what-are-the-ramifications-of-a-currency-with-fix/168#168 https://economics.stackexchange.com/questions/166/from-an-ec... You also can’t spend your bitcoins while you’re offline.
    - lawn 7y ago
      Bitcoin uses a fixed currency supply, but it's not inherent to all cryptocurrencies. > You also can’t spend your bitcoins while you’re offline. Is that supposed to invalidate my points? Especially since I placed emphasis on them being a digital currency and I even said so in my comment?
  - ubercow13 7y ago
    >nobody can arbitrarily increase the supply Why is this good? This seems like a missing feature
    - lawn 7y ago
      This isn't about deflationary vs inflationary money, because you can encode any type of currency policy. Instead it's about no single entity can suddenly decide "let's issue trillions of dollars to repay our debt!", which erodes any savings you have and can in the worst case collapse the economy (see hyperinflation). What I guess you're after is having the ability to respond to the economic climate by stimulating the economy? Then let me introduce you to the concept of sound money and what Austrian economists have to say about it.[1] The basic point is it's impossible for a single actor to predict the market behavior, it's why a planned economy doesn't work, because the market consists of actors who only act in their own best interest and don't have perfect knowledge. [1]: https://mises.org/library/principle-sound-money https://mises.org/library/principle-sound-money Edit: It is indeed possible to change the currency policy... If the community agrees, which is a very tall order.
      - ianai 7y ago
        That decision at the Fed has been historically taken after consultation of (if needed) the entire financial industry and academics and political leaders (to some extent).
      - pwodhouse 7y ago
        Are there any real world success stories of Austrian economics? It's like the libertarian version of communism's "works perfectly in theory". How do civilians escape a depression with no money in an Austrian economy?
        maps 7y ago
        > Are there any real world success stories of Austrian economics? It's like the libertarian version of communism's "works perfectly in theory". It is exactly that. There is no example of pure austrian economics just as there has never been a 'true' communist state since human nature will never allow the extremes they need to work. > How do civilians escape a depression with no money in an Austrian economy? The entire point of 'sound money' is not actually to help the general population survive or prosper, it is specifically to limit the power of government. From the link above "It is impossible to grasp the meaning of the idea of sound money if one does not realize that it was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments." Of course you might have a depression, but that should be cleared up quickly since the free market allows the fit businesses to buy up weak competitors (since there is no anti-trust in austrian land). If you are unemployed during this time you can always find some labor job to do so will never be truly unemployed (since there is no minimum wage or restrictions to work).
  - zaarn 7y ago
    >It's a great medium exchange, but it suffers from low adoption meaning it's a bad store of value (but so is fiat) and a bad unit of account (but so is gold). So it unites the drawbacks of both fiat and gold without any of the advantages. >* It's sound money whereas fiat is not (nobody can arbitrarily increase the supply) Yeah they can, it's called a hard fork in cryptocurrency. In fiat it's called "printing play money", but the goal is essentially the same. >Except for the fact that you can't send gold coins digitally. Actually you can, though in this case you exchange ownership contracts of the gold, which you can swap for the gold you own at your bank. Plus I don't need to wait an hour to do that, I can do it even offline if I wish, where all parties can verify the transfer without a computer at all. >Also, it's much more difficult to check for gold coins. And difficult to transport. It's easy with cryptocurrencies. Until the tax office knocks at your door and wants to know where all that money went. Then the ease of transport is suddenly a problem. >It's a great medium exchange, In my experience, no. It's not a medium of exchange at the moment any more than beer tops and a ballpoint pen are. Bitcoin and Friends are at the moment a speculative asset that people hoard in case it gets more valuable or use as an unregulated stock exchange. The average customer can't even get refunds if they get scammed, how am I supposed to take it seriously as a digital currency?
    - lawn 7y ago
      > So it unites the drawbacks of both fiat and gold without any of the advantages. Well, if you conveniently ignore the advantages... > Yeah they can, it's called a hard fork in cryptocurrency. That's similar to me printing "Doge dollars" and claiming it increases the supply of US dollar. > Actually you can, though in this case you exchange ownership contracts of the gold, which you can swap for the gold you own at your bank. Yes... If we ignore the fact that you're not actually sending gold. > Until the tax office knocks at your door and wants to know where all that money went. Then the ease of transport is suddenly a problem. That's not an argument. Taxes are applied in the same way as cash is taxed, with benefit of you having a ledger you can reference. > It's not a medium of exchange at the moment any more than beer tops and a ballpoint pen are. Except them being instantly verifiable, have a constrained supply, are easier to transfer, are divisible, are fungible & uniform... Just the properties that money actually needs and make for a good medium of exchange. > The average customer can't even get refunds if they get scammed, how am I supposed to take it seriously as a digital currency? I guess the same way you take physical cash seriously?
  - berbec 7y ago
    Can I buy a cup of coffee with bitcoin? See above Can I pay my rent in bitcoin? No Can I buy my groceries in bitcoin? No Can I expect bitcoin to hold any semblance of a stable value, like an actual 1st-world currency or standard, quality investment product no? So if it's not useful as a currency and not useful as a store of value, what is Bitcoin? I really want to trust in the brave new world, but I just can't.
    - xorcist 7y ago
      You can't pay your rent in yen either, but that doesn't make it a failed currency. I'd be pretty surprised in you could even get that cup of coffee for yen.
      - berbec 7y ago
        But Bitcoin is supposed to be a currency without boarders. If it can't make it in a country with the level of tech-adoption like the USA for the above simple tasks, please help me understand the use case.
    - kobasa 7y ago
      Seems you haven't looked up the history of "1st world currencies" and how they don't in fact retain value over time. Even the almighty US dollar has lost 97% of its value over the past century and it's the reserve currency.
      - hudon 7y ago
        Who cares? No one stores their wealth in USD. You simply buy treasury inflation protected bonds. Problem solved. You only keep in USD your working capital.
  - JulianMorrison 7y ago
    Back in the early 00's there were companies "egold" and "goldmoney" that did effectively a centralized, infinitely divisible currency denoted in gold and exchangeable for gold. egold got shut down for facilitating money laundering. I think IIRC goldmoney retired from being a currency and became a non-exchangeable gold vault. Governments really didn't like them.
  - navigatesol 7y ago
    >More acceptable than other digital money (banks and payment processors might say no) >More easily divisible than for example gold coins and gold bars These are true. >It's sound money whereas fiat is not (nobody can arbitrarily increase the supply) You'll have to explain why the inability to increase the money supply is a benefit? Sure, money printing can be abused, but a growing money supply is also beneficial in a growing economy (output + population). Second, how do the current holders selling the currency to people without any Bitcoin not count as "increasing supply". If they don't sell, supply is zero, after all. What is the value of Bitcoin as a currency in that case? Nothing. >Much more portable. You can send any amount to anyone in the world, as long as they have internet. That provisio at the end is a big one, considering internet is susceptible to going down via both natural disasters and government whims.
jrvxo 7y ago
On being a currency, since its price fluctuates too much to be taken seriously, so it's used as an investment instead.
- moccachino 7y ago
  Of all the bizarre phenomenons in the world, I think the Bitcoin-as-an-investment takes the cake. People spend a ton of energy (that could otherwise to actual useful things) on shifting around bits that they then claim are very valuable. You could make a similar claim about fiat money except that actually makes commerce easier. Bitcoin is not a good way to transfer value since like you said it's too volatile for a currency. So it's built on nothing, it does nothing and underpins nothing, it wastes huge amounts of otherwise useful energy and that makes it a good investment? Maybe I'm just too dumb to see the genius of it.
  - lawn 7y ago
    You know, I too really dislike the investment focus of most people. If it's not usable, it's just a bigger-fools-game. And price volatility is a definite concern. Yet many do use it as a currency, volatility isn't a showstopper. Just look at the use in darknet markets, most serious VPNs and VPS services offer it and you can buy all sorts of stuff on for example Webhallen or Inet (two of the biggest Swedish online computer stores). > So it's built on nothing, it does nothing and underpins nothing And this is wrong. It's secured by cryptography and game theory. The big thing it does is fairly simple: It enables digital payments without a trusted third party. It's relevant for businesses who cannot accept credit cards and there are thousands of stories where startups gets their accounts frozen, for arbitrary reasons, which may tank their business. I wrote about this and more here: https://whycryptocurrencies.com/ https://whycryptocurrencies.com/ > it wastes huge amounts of otherwise useful energy Actually most of the energy comes from renewable sources, which would be wasted otherwise. The Bitcoin mining industry is so competitive, it wouldn't be profitable otherwise. I don't want to wave away the concerns as nothing, because it is a valid concern, but there are tons of other things we waste much more energy on.
    - 7y ago
hjk05 7y ago
I tried to buy a cup of coffee recently at a bitcoin only cafe. Though I didn’t end up paying with bitcoin because it took a day for the bitcoin atm deposit to clear. So I asked a friend who worked in the building to spot me a cup of coffee, and he paid... by making a line on a piece of paper they used to do bookkeeping denoted in fiat because no-one wanted to go through the hassle of bitcoin transfers and no one had enough trust in the currency to keep prices in bitcoins, so they just tracked the costs in fiat. All of this in a “bitcoin only” cafe. Bitcoin as a penny-stock investment opportunity still seems successful, but as a viable currency it seems to have failed. And now cue the people saying that bitcoin was never actually intended to be used like a digital coin...
- asah 7y ago
  Don't forget high transaction costs for BTC.
  - sowbug 7y ago
    Currently about 12 cents US.
    - ricanare 7y ago
      12 cents is a lot, since it is static regardless of the transaction size. Small transactions at 12 cents fee are ridiculously expensive. You need low fee + 0-conf for small transactions (e.g. BCH). 12 cents is negligible for large transactions, hence why people call it a store of value. And since bitcoin doesn't scale, transaction costs will skyrocket again to crazy transaction fees of 50-100$ easily if it starts being used.
    - joshuahedlund 7y ago
      Where are you getting this? Why does bitinfocharts.com show a Median transaction fee of $1.85 ?
      - eric_cc 7y ago
        It's definitely not $1.85 lol. You can try sending a few sats between your own wallets to test it if you're genuinely curious.
M2Ys4U 7y ago
Everything, pretty much.
navigatesol 7y ago
>Could you elaborate on what Bitcoin failed at? I wouldn't say it's failed, but I don't see it succeeding, either. Is Bitcoin more or less mainstream than it was 2 years ago? Are transactions faster? Is it used at more retailers? I don't see any of that. It seems like it's only a tool for speculation.
sonnyblarney 7y ago
"Could you elaborate on what Bitcoin failed at?" BTC failed to be a currency that could be used for practical purposes. There's really nowhere to spend BTC today that matters. If Amazon, Costco and AirBnB etc. allowed BTC, well, others might join, and we'd possibly see real circulation. For whatever reason, it was never meant to be.

Could you elaborate on what Bitcoin failed at?

by sins 7y ago

Could you elaborate on what Bitcoin failed at?

Conception. It’s pitched as a replacement for government backed, fiat currency. But I’ve never heard or seen a convincing, coherent explanation that makes it clear this is a currency. For one, a currency can’t be reliant on an internet connection for validity. My 1$ bill in my wallet absolutely does not rely on that. In fact, there’s an entire country validating that dollars usefulness. A gold coin essentially answers the usual doubts in fiat currency.

lawn 7y ago
> But I’ve never heard or seen a convincing, coherent explanation that makes it clear this is a currency Cryptocurrencies is a better type of money for a few reasons: * More acceptable than other digital money (banks and payment processors might say no) * More easily divisible than for example gold coins and gold bars * It's sound money whereas fiat is not (nobody can arbitrarily increase the supply) * Much more portable. You can send any amount to anyone in the world, as long as they have internet. To be clear, cryptocurrencies are like cash but in digital form. It's a great medium exchange, but it suffers from low adoption meaning it's a bad store of value (but so is fiat) and a bad unit of account (but so is gold). > For one, a currency can’t be reliant on an internet connection for validity. My 1$ bill in my wallet absolutely does not rely on that So you don't consider digital fiat currencies then? Me not having internet for a period of time doesn't invalidate my cryptocurrency holdings. I just need internet to spend it (a fair constraint for digital money). > A gold coin essentially answers the usual doubts in fiat currency. Except for the fact that you can't send gold coins digitally. Also, it's much more difficult to check for gold coins. And difficult to transport. It's easy with cryptocurrencies.
- ianai 7y ago
  Here’s an interesting discussion of why a fixed currency supply hinders the market from clearing (and other ailments) https://economics.stackexchange.com/questions/166/from-an-economics-perspective-what-are-the-ramifications-of-a-currency-with-fix/168#168 https://economics.stackexchange.com/questions/166/from-an-ec... You also can’t spend your bitcoins while you’re offline.
  - lawn 7y ago
    Bitcoin uses a fixed currency supply, but it's not inherent to all cryptocurrencies. > You also can’t spend your bitcoins while you’re offline. Is that supposed to invalidate my points? Especially since I placed emphasis on them being a digital currency and I even said so in my comment?
- ubercow13 7y ago
  >nobody can arbitrarily increase the supply Why is this good? This seems like a missing feature
  - lawn 7y ago
    This isn't about deflationary vs inflationary money, because you can encode any type of currency policy. Instead it's about no single entity can suddenly decide "let's issue trillions of dollars to repay our debt!", which erodes any savings you have and can in the worst case collapse the economy (see hyperinflation). What I guess you're after is having the ability to respond to the economic climate by stimulating the economy? Then let me introduce you to the concept of sound money and what Austrian economists have to say about it.[1] The basic point is it's impossible for a single actor to predict the market behavior, it's why a planned economy doesn't work, because the market consists of actors who only act in their own best interest and don't have perfect knowledge. [1]: https://mises.org/library/principle-sound-money https://mises.org/library/principle-sound-money Edit: It is indeed possible to change the currency policy... If the community agrees, which is a very tall order.
    - ianai 7y ago
      That decision at the Fed has been historically taken after consultation of (if needed) the entire financial industry and academics and political leaders (to some extent).
    - pwodhouse 7y ago
      Are there any real world success stories of Austrian economics? It's like the libertarian version of communism's "works perfectly in theory". How do civilians escape a depression with no money in an Austrian economy?
      - maps 7y ago
        > Are there any real world success stories of Austrian economics? It's like the libertarian version of communism's "works perfectly in theory". It is exactly that. There is no example of pure austrian economics just as there has never been a 'true' communist state since human nature will never allow the extremes they need to work. > How do civilians escape a depression with no money in an Austrian economy? The entire point of 'sound money' is not actually to help the general population survive or prosper, it is specifically to limit the power of government. From the link above "It is impossible to grasp the meaning of the idea of sound money if one does not realize that it was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments." Of course you might have a depression, but that should be cleared up quickly since the free market allows the fit businesses to buy up weak competitors (since there is no anti-trust in austrian land). If you are unemployed during this time you can always find some labor job to do so will never be truly unemployed (since there is no minimum wage or restrictions to work).
- zaarn 7y ago
  >It's a great medium exchange, but it suffers from low adoption meaning it's a bad store of value (but so is fiat) and a bad unit of account (but so is gold). So it unites the drawbacks of both fiat and gold without any of the advantages. >* It's sound money whereas fiat is not (nobody can arbitrarily increase the supply) Yeah they can, it's called a hard fork in cryptocurrency. In fiat it's called "printing play money", but the goal is essentially the same. >Except for the fact that you can't send gold coins digitally. Actually you can, though in this case you exchange ownership contracts of the gold, which you can swap for the gold you own at your bank. Plus I don't need to wait an hour to do that, I can do it even offline if I wish, where all parties can verify the transfer without a computer at all. >Also, it's much more difficult to check for gold coins. And difficult to transport. It's easy with cryptocurrencies. Until the tax office knocks at your door and wants to know where all that money went. Then the ease of transport is suddenly a problem. >It's a great medium exchange, In my experience, no. It's not a medium of exchange at the moment any more than beer tops and a ballpoint pen are. Bitcoin and Friends are at the moment a speculative asset that people hoard in case it gets more valuable or use as an unregulated stock exchange. The average customer can't even get refunds if they get scammed, how am I supposed to take it seriously as a digital currency?
  - lawn 7y ago
    > So it unites the drawbacks of both fiat and gold without any of the advantages. Well, if you conveniently ignore the advantages... > Yeah they can, it's called a hard fork in cryptocurrency. That's similar to me printing "Doge dollars" and claiming it increases the supply of US dollar. > Actually you can, though in this case you exchange ownership contracts of the gold, which you can swap for the gold you own at your bank. Yes... If we ignore the fact that you're not actually sending gold. > Until the tax office knocks at your door and wants to know where all that money went. Then the ease of transport is suddenly a problem. That's not an argument. Taxes are applied in the same way as cash is taxed, with benefit of you having a ledger you can reference. > It's not a medium of exchange at the moment any more than beer tops and a ballpoint pen are. Except them being instantly verifiable, have a constrained supply, are easier to transfer, are divisible, are fungible & uniform... Just the properties that money actually needs and make for a good medium of exchange. > The average customer can't even get refunds if they get scammed, how am I supposed to take it seriously as a digital currency? I guess the same way you take physical cash seriously?
- berbec 7y ago
  Can I buy a cup of coffee with bitcoin? See above Can I pay my rent in bitcoin? No Can I buy my groceries in bitcoin? No Can I expect bitcoin to hold any semblance of a stable value, like an actual 1st-world currency or standard, quality investment product no? So if it's not useful as a currency and not useful as a store of value, what is Bitcoin? I really want to trust in the brave new world, but I just can't.
  - xorcist 7y ago
    You can't pay your rent in yen either, but that doesn't make it a failed currency. I'd be pretty surprised in you could even get that cup of coffee for yen.
    - berbec 7y ago
      But Bitcoin is supposed to be a currency without boarders. If it can't make it in a country with the level of tech-adoption like the USA for the above simple tasks, please help me understand the use case.
  - kobasa 7y ago
    Seems you haven't looked up the history of "1st world currencies" and how they don't in fact retain value over time. Even the almighty US dollar has lost 97% of its value over the past century and it's the reserve currency.
    - hudon 7y ago
      Who cares? No one stores their wealth in USD. You simply buy treasury inflation protected bonds. Problem solved. You only keep in USD your working capital.
- JulianMorrison 7y ago
  Back in the early 00's there were companies "egold" and "goldmoney" that did effectively a centralized, infinitely divisible currency denoted in gold and exchangeable for gold. egold got shut down for facilitating money laundering. I think IIRC goldmoney retired from being a currency and became a non-exchangeable gold vault. Governments really didn't like them.
- navigatesol 7y ago
  >More acceptable than other digital money (banks and payment processors might say no) >More easily divisible than for example gold coins and gold bars These are true. >It's sound money whereas fiat is not (nobody can arbitrarily increase the supply) You'll have to explain why the inability to increase the money supply is a benefit? Sure, money printing can be abused, but a growing money supply is also beneficial in a growing economy (output + population). Second, how do the current holders selling the currency to people without any Bitcoin not count as "increasing supply". If they don't sell, supply is zero, after all. What is the value of Bitcoin as a currency in that case? Nothing. >Much more portable. You can send any amount to anyone in the world, as long as they have internet. That provisio at the end is a big one, considering internet is susceptible to going down via both natural disasters and government whims.

jrvxo 7y ago

On being a currency, since its price fluctuates too much to be taken seriously, so it's used as an investment instead.

moccachino 7y ago
Of all the bizarre phenomenons in the world, I think the Bitcoin-as-an-investment takes the cake. People spend a ton of energy (that could otherwise to actual useful things) on shifting around bits that they then claim are very valuable. You could make a similar claim about fiat money except that actually makes commerce easier. Bitcoin is not a good way to transfer value since like you said it's too volatile for a currency. So it's built on nothing, it does nothing and underpins nothing, it wastes huge amounts of otherwise useful energy and that makes it a good investment? Maybe I'm just too dumb to see the genius of it.
- lawn 7y ago
  You know, I too really dislike the investment focus of most people. If it's not usable, it's just a bigger-fools-game. And price volatility is a definite concern. Yet many do use it as a currency, volatility isn't a showstopper. Just look at the use in darknet markets, most serious VPNs and VPS services offer it and you can buy all sorts of stuff on for example Webhallen or Inet (two of the biggest Swedish online computer stores). > So it's built on nothing, it does nothing and underpins nothing And this is wrong. It's secured by cryptography and game theory. The big thing it does is fairly simple: It enables digital payments without a trusted third party. It's relevant for businesses who cannot accept credit cards and there are thousands of stories where startups gets their accounts frozen, for arbitrary reasons, which may tank their business. I wrote about this and more here: https://whycryptocurrencies.com/ https://whycryptocurrencies.com/ > it wastes huge amounts of otherwise useful energy Actually most of the energy comes from renewable sources, which would be wasted otherwise. The Bitcoin mining industry is so competitive, it wouldn't be profitable otherwise. I don't want to wave away the concerns as nothing, because it is a valid concern, but there are tons of other things we waste much more energy on.
  - 7y ago

hjk05 7y ago

I tried to buy a cup of coffee recently at a bitcoin only cafe. Though I didn’t end up paying with bitcoin because it took a day for the bitcoin atm deposit to clear. So I asked a friend who worked in the building to spot me a cup of coffee, and he paid... by making a line on a piece of paper they used to do bookkeeping denoted in fiat because no-one wanted to go through the hassle of bitcoin transfers and no one had enough trust in the currency to keep prices in bitcoins, so they just tracked the costs in fiat. All of this in a “bitcoin only” cafe. Bitcoin as a penny-stock investment opportunity still seems successful, but as a viable currency it seems to have failed. And now cue the people saying that bitcoin was never actually intended to be used like a digital coin...

asah 7y ago
Don't forget high transaction costs for BTC.
- sowbug 7y ago
  Currently about 12 cents US.
  - ricanare 7y ago
    12 cents is a lot, since it is static regardless of the transaction size. Small transactions at 12 cents fee are ridiculously expensive. You need low fee + 0-conf for small transactions (e.g. BCH). 12 cents is negligible for large transactions, hence why people call it a store of value. And since bitcoin doesn't scale, transaction costs will skyrocket again to crazy transaction fees of 50-100$ easily if it starts being used.
  - joshuahedlund 7y ago
    Where are you getting this? Why does bitinfocharts.com show a Median transaction fee of $1.85 ?
    - eric_cc 7y ago
      It's definitely not $1.85 lol. You can try sending a few sats between your own wallets to test it if you're genuinely curious.

M2Ys4U 7y ago

Everything, pretty much.

navigatesol 7y ago

>Could you elaborate on what Bitcoin failed at? I wouldn't say it's failed, but I don't see it succeeding, either. Is Bitcoin more or less mainstream than it was 2 years ago? Are transactions faster? Is it used at more retailers? I don't see any of that. It seems like it's only a tool for speculation.

sonnyblarney 7y ago

"Could you elaborate on what Bitcoin failed at?" BTC failed to be a currency that could be used for practical purposes. There's really nowhere to spend BTC today that matters. If Amazon, Costco and AirBnB etc. allowed BTC, well, others might join, and we'd possibly see real circulation. For whatever reason, it was never meant to be.