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I lament the recurring fact that “the price” dictates more than anything else when and even if a news article appears in a mainstream news medium like Bloomberg

I lament the recurring fact that “the price” dictates more than anything else when and even if a news article appears in a mainstream news medium like Bloomberg. There is soo much technical development in bitcoin that is way more news-worthy than what the market happens to be doing today ️

roboys 7y ago
Price is an advertising mechanism, though I do agree with your sentiment.
heliodor 7y ago
Agreed. Which ones fascinate you the most?
boybd 7y ago
What else is there? Bitcoin is an investment, so this is important in the same way that the price of gold climbing like this would be important.
- elil17 7y ago
  Bitcoin is meant to be a way of completing payments, not an investment. The use as an investment goes against its primary purpose.
  - anm89 7y ago
    Who cares what it's "meant" to be?
  - imtringued 7y ago
    You must be pretty behind the times. Most shops have stopped accepting bitcoin because of volatility and high transaction fees. Bitcoin thrives as virtual gold precisely because those two downsides make it useless as a currency.
    - pmorici 7y ago
      That's the primary reason the Bitcoin Core / Bitcoin Cash split 2 years ago now was a difference in opinion about whether or not usage as a payment method mattered. Now you have two competing camps one is pushing the Bitcoin as egold and high fees while the other is pushing Bitcoin as a means of exchange with low fees. The volatility was solved by the payment processors. In any case the big payment processors support both now. The higher than credit card fees though did kill the use of Bitcoin Core as a payment method in ordinary transactions.
  - wavepruner 7y ago
    Bitcoin was invented as a way to protect individuals from governments devaluing fiat currency. Payments have always been secondary to this goal. Read Satoshi's white paper.
- sagichmal 7y ago
  > Bitcoin is an investment Bitcoin fails every imaginable property of investment vehicles.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - buboard 7y ago
    we don't really need to have the same discussion ad nauseam . People invest in bitcoin so it must be an investment
    - sagichmal 7y ago
      People buying Bitcoin aren’t investing just because they think they are.
    - panarky 7y ago
      > ad nauseam Exactly. Every cryptocurrency discussion is an Eternal September [0] that recycles the same, tired, 10-year-old arguments. Pretty soon some smart guy will pop up to educate us on the Dutch tulip mania of 1637, how Bitcoin isn't "backed" by anything, or how the US dollar is "backed" by taxes and the military. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
buboard 7y ago
what i hate is that bloomberg is mainstream news now. They re a financial website.
kolinko 7y ago
As someone who’s been in the field since 2012 - yes, the tech part is what’s the most interesting. I explained to countless people that price is not what matters the most. Having said that, I’ll shamefully admit that when the prices go up I get happy and excited :) We’re all humans after all!
- vkhorikov 7y ago
  That's like saying you read Playboy because of articles. Price is the single most important metric of Bitcoin's success. Price determines whether Bitcoin will (or how close Bitcoin is to) overtaking Gold and fiat in becoming the world's reserve asset and freeing people from wealth confiscation via hidden inflation tax.
dalbasal 7y ago
I suppose it depends on what we mean by newsworthy. To anyone who owns (or doesn't anymore, or thought about it and..) bitcoin, price is what they care about. It's a little dull as news though, since all there it is a number, with all following words redundant. The tech is perhaps the interesting part, since it evolves and has depth. From my pov, neither are the most important part. Usage is what actually matters. That's both hardest to report on and perhaps most disappointing.. at least for bitcoin as a currency.
vvpan 7y ago
What technical development are you speaking of? I thought the Bitcoin community didn't want any modifications to Bitcoin.
- h1d 7y ago
  It doesn't even scale enough for mass adoption. Who said it shouldn't have any modifications?
  - vvpan 7y ago
    Not me. I am trying to understand which developments the author of the parent comment is talking about.
    - roboys 7y ago
      Probably Lightning Network.
      - bubersson 7y ago
        There are some nice updates in Lightning Network, e.g. I just saw that Lightning Labs released beta of a “non-custodial” mobile wallet that with good UX internally runs Lightning node on the phone: https://blog.lightning.engineering/announcement/2019/06/19/mobile-app.html https://blog.lightning.engineering/announcement/2019/06/19/m... I think the UX is still far from great, but it’s slowly getting there.
- drexlspivey 7y ago
  Why would you think such a blatantly false thing? Some recent developments include: - Schnorr Signatures https://github.com/sipa/bips/blob/bip-schnorr/bip-schnorr.mediawiki https://github.com/sipa/bips/blob/bip-schnorr/bip-schnorr.me... - Taproot https://github.com/sipa/bips/blob/bip-schnorr/bip-taproot.mediawiki https://github.com/sipa/bips/blob/bip-schnorr/bip-taproot.me... - Erlay (relay protocol that reduces bandwidth up to 75%) https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.10518 https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.10518 - Dandelion (privacy enhancing transaction relay protocol) https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/13947 https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/13947 - Miniscript https://prezi.com/view/KH7AXjnse7glXNoqCxPH/ https://prezi.com/view/KH7AXjnse7glXNoqCxPH/ and many more

roboys 7y ago

Price is an advertising mechanism, though I do agree with your sentiment.

heliodor 7y ago

Agreed. Which ones fascinate you the most?

boybd 7y ago

What else is there? Bitcoin is an investment, so this is important in the same way that the price of gold climbing like this would be important.

elil17 7y ago
Bitcoin is meant to be a way of completing payments, not an investment. The use as an investment goes against its primary purpose.
- anm89 7y ago
  Who cares what it's "meant" to be?
- imtringued 7y ago
  You must be pretty behind the times. Most shops have stopped accepting bitcoin because of volatility and high transaction fees. Bitcoin thrives as virtual gold precisely because those two downsides make it useless as a currency.
  - pmorici 7y ago
    That's the primary reason the Bitcoin Core / Bitcoin Cash split 2 years ago now was a difference in opinion about whether or not usage as a payment method mattered. Now you have two competing camps one is pushing the Bitcoin as egold and high fees while the other is pushing Bitcoin as a means of exchange with low fees. The volatility was solved by the payment processors. In any case the big payment processors support both now. The higher than credit card fees though did kill the use of Bitcoin Core as a payment method in ordinary transactions.
- wavepruner 7y ago
  Bitcoin was invented as a way to protect individuals from governments devaluing fiat currency. Payments have always been secondary to this goal. Read Satoshi's white paper.
sagichmal 7y ago
> Bitcoin is an investment Bitcoin fails every imaginable property of investment vehicles.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- buboard 7y ago
  we don't really need to have the same discussion ad nauseam . People invest in bitcoin so it must be an investment
  - sagichmal 7y ago
    People buying Bitcoin aren’t investing just because they think they are.
  - panarky 7y ago
    > ad nauseam Exactly. Every cryptocurrency discussion is an Eternal September [0] that recycles the same, tired, 10-year-old arguments. Pretty soon some smart guy will pop up to educate us on the Dutch tulip mania of 1637, how Bitcoin isn't "backed" by anything, or how the US dollar is "backed" by taxes and the military. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

buboard 7y ago

what i hate is that bloomberg is mainstream news now. They re a financial website.

kolinko 7y ago

As someone who’s been in the field since 2012 - yes, the tech part is what’s the most interesting. I explained to countless people that price is not what matters the most. Having said that, I’ll shamefully admit that when the prices go up I get happy and excited :) We’re all humans after all!

vkhorikov 7y ago
That's like saying you read Playboy because of articles. Price is the single most important metric of Bitcoin's success. Price determines whether Bitcoin will (or how close Bitcoin is to) overtaking Gold and fiat in becoming the world's reserve asset and freeing people from wealth confiscation via hidden inflation tax.

dalbasal 7y ago

I suppose it depends on what we mean by newsworthy. To anyone who owns (or doesn't anymore, or thought about it and..) bitcoin, price is what they care about. It's a little dull as news though, since all there it is a number, with all following words redundant. The tech is perhaps the interesting part, since it evolves and has depth. From my pov, neither are the most important part. Usage is what actually matters. That's both hardest to report on and perhaps most disappointing.. at least for bitcoin as a currency.

vvpan 7y ago

What technical development are you speaking of? I thought the Bitcoin community didn't want any modifications to Bitcoin.

h1d 7y ago
It doesn't even scale enough for mass adoption. Who said it shouldn't have any modifications?
- vvpan 7y ago
  Not me. I am trying to understand which developments the author of the parent comment is talking about.
  - roboys 7y ago
    Probably Lightning Network.
    - bubersson 7y ago
      There are some nice updates in Lightning Network, e.g. I just saw that Lightning Labs released beta of a “non-custodial” mobile wallet that with good UX internally runs Lightning node on the phone: https://blog.lightning.engineering/announcement/2019/06/19/mobile-app.html https://blog.lightning.engineering/announcement/2019/06/19/m... I think the UX is still far from great, but it’s slowly getting there.
drexlspivey 7y ago
Why would you think such a blatantly false thing? Some recent developments include: - Schnorr Signatures https://github.com/sipa/bips/blob/bip-schnorr/bip-schnorr.mediawiki https://github.com/sipa/bips/blob/bip-schnorr/bip-schnorr.me... - Taproot https://github.com/sipa/bips/blob/bip-schnorr/bip-taproot.mediawiki https://github.com/sipa/bips/blob/bip-schnorr/bip-taproot.me... - Erlay (relay protocol that reduces bandwidth up to 75%) https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.10518 https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.10518 - Dandelion (privacy enhancing transaction relay protocol) https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/13947 https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/13947 - Miniscript https://prezi.com/view/KH7AXjnse7glXNoqCxPH/ https://prezi.com/view/KH7AXjnse7glXNoqCxPH/ and many more