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There's a pretty key quote in here and an attendant logical fallacy: "If five years from now everyone in the world has become a bitcoin user, that could only b

There's a pretty key quote in here and an attendant logical fallacy: "If five years from now everyone in the world has become a bitcoin user, that could only be because something very very bad has happened to the regular monetary system ... Surely no bitcoiner would actually want such a dark future." That statement is absolutely true, as a conditional. But the logical fallacy it represents is "If X happens, that would be unthinkably bad. Therefore, X will not happen." (Similar thinking is behind coronavirus-denial and climate-change denial.) I think that most hardcore Bitcoin aficionados (the group that's still in it, even now that the bubble has burst and you can't get rich off of it) would accept the above premise. If Bitcoin becomes successful, something seriously bad has happened to the monetary system. The difference is that most hardcore Bitcoin investors also accept the premise that something seriously bad is going to happen to the monetary system. There's a very heavy overlap between folks who hodl Bitcoin and folks who believe that the Fed is going to continue to debase the dollar, we'll get hyperinflation, the government will collapse, and we'll all end up pledging allegiance to a variety of crypto-anarchist communes that conduct commerce through cryptocurrency. Many of them also include guns, stockpiles, and bug-out bunkers in their contingency planning. If you accept that premise, the goal is not "How do I get rich?", it's "How do I minimize the impact of this collapse to myself and give myself a leg up in the post-collapse world?"

harikb 6y ago
There is a way for people who have imagination like you to get rich in the current world though - turn this into a Netflix movie or series :)
rorykoehler 6y ago
Very good insight. I agree 100%. My hypothesis is that the massive injection of new cash into the stock market during the pandemic response is a foundational play for the end of the US dollar. I'm not sure of the steps between the cash injection and the adoption of cryptocurrency/ies as the de facto currency/ies but I am certain that this is a calculated attempt to debase the US dollar in order to disarm the unprepared and grab power through the creation a right-libertarian techno dystopia. This is exactly the type of play Steve Bannon would make. FWIW I hold no crypto so I'm not coming at this from the crypto-bro skin in the game angle.
- save_ferris 6y ago
  > but I am certain that this is a calculated attempt to debase the US dollar in order to disarm the unprepared and grab power through the creation a right-libertarian techno dystopia What makes you think this is more plausible than the Fed printing money to keep millions of people from starving/getting evicted and businesses to stay afloat amid one of the worst financial crises in history?
  - rorykoehler 6y ago
    Because 1) of who got the money and 2) how it was spent. If they were serious about what you describe they'd provide a basic income directly to the people.
    - nostrademons 6y ago
      That's kinda what they did - they gave $600/week to every unemployed American, on top of what the state was giving them. Problem was, a lot of it just went into the stock market, and from there into the pockets of wealthy stockholders.
fossuser 6y ago
I agree on the fallacy, but arguably that also aligns with some of the HAM radio community? Maybe this stereotype isn't true, but I thought at least a part of the HAM radio community was preparing for the collapse of civilization/communication networks.
- usrusr 6y ago
  The preparedness of "I'll be able to help if that situation happens" is a very different kind of preparedness than "I'll be rich if that happens". There may be a few people that are interested in bitcoin for reasons that are similar to those found in HAM radio, but it's impossible to disentangle bitcoin from the associated greed.
- nostrademons 6y ago
  I think it does apply to much of the HAM radio community. Probably not all though. Also, their preparedness actually has paid off in past natural disasters - 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the Andaman Islands tsunami, and Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico all had robust HAM radio community responses.
- NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
  But ham radio is independent of infrastructure, in a way that internet technologies are not. For HF radio over large distances (hundreds of kms at least), all you need is for the physical properties of the ionosphere to remain constant, and a smallish amount of electrical power.
harryh 6y ago
You know what's definitely going to be valuable in a post collapse world where people are making heavy use of bug-out bunkers stashed with food and guns? A digital currency that requires a sophisticated global computer network to function. Ya. That makes a lot of sense.
- pixelperfect 6y ago
  The world reserve currency can collapse without all of society collapsing to the extent you are suggesting.
- zxcmx 6y ago
  A more charitable approach would be to consider that bitcoin and "bug out bags" can be things you have for separate or related contingencies. We live in wonderfully complex societies and history shows us there are a lot of failure modes well short of apocalypse. To be clear I'm not a "bug out bag" kind of person but I do believe that some disaster preparation is useful. I also believe that there's a modest chance of serious financial turmoil in the medium to long term future. Bitcoin is likely to hold some value in the event of a localised financial collapse.
  - bioipbiop 6y ago
    What’s the advantage of bitcoin against holding a diversified bundle of global equities or foreign currency in the event of a localised financial collapse?
    - Taek 6y ago
      Bitcoin can be sent and received anywhere in the world needing no than a raspi's worth of computing power. Not many banking hoops to jump through, sanctions aren't at play, very difficult / impossible for a non-superpower country to exert control. Greece and Venezuela are both recent examples of countries where people who owned Bitcoin faired substantially better than their peers who did not.
      - 6y ago
steerablesafe 6y ago
> "If X happens, that would be unthinkably bad. Therefore, X will not happen." or "If X happens, that would be unthinkably bad. Therefore planning for X is futile."
devalgo 6y ago
What's the minimum number of bitcoin nodes needed for it to continue operating and is it reasonable to think that post collapse that many PCs will remain online? Seems unlikely to me.
- monokh 6y ago
  2 powered raspberry pis and a moderately functioning internet is the answer. The network adjusts it's requirement for power based on the total power thrown at it. This is called "difficulty adjustment". Beyond total world collapse that would set society back a century, I cannot imagine a scenario where you couldn't continue running Bitcoin as long as a few people had the motivation.
  - exdsq 6y ago
    Solar flare?
  - Sebb767 6y ago
    If they had the motivation, yes. However, why would the have the motivation instead of simply using well-known limited physical currencies, such as cigarettes, gold etc? Especially since you'd need to make the money using power and if power is sparse, you'd probably need the bit you get for refrigeration or cooking.
- friendzis 6y ago
  Minimum? 1. That is, however, not the problem. The problem is that in the event of sudden loss of significant fraction of compute power block times skyrocket, because significantly reduced compute power still has to solve problem of previous difficulty. As a consequence block times become so high that transactions are effectively blocked and the only solution to keep the network functional is a fork. Unless you imagine a scenario where everyone goes offline except for a small group and everyone slowly reconnects to the small group, most likely there would be highly partitioned network with its own bitcoin fork with enough of transaction history that a reconnect would mean collapse of local-economy.
  - 6y ago
xiphias2 6y ago
,,If Bitcoin becomes successful, something seriously bad has happened to the monetary system.'' I'm a hardcore Bitcoin believer, and I believe something similar, although not exactly the same: Something seriously bad happened to the monetary system (in 1971), therefore I believe Bitcoin will become successful (in the next 10-20 years).
- skohan 6y ago
  As a bitcoin believer, what do you think about Tether, and the reports that the run-up of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in 2017 was essentially due to price manipulation via the injection of billions of dollars worth of faked value into the system?
  - marcell 6y ago
    Not OP, but I would say: (1) Tether is largely orthogonal to bitcoin. It's a way to trade USD more quickly over the internet, which isn't really related to bitcoin, besides the underlying technology is similar. (2) I don't know much about the 2017 run-up in terms of price manipulation. I think Ethereum was more impacted than bitcoin, but of course both experienced price surges and crashes. Is there any public info available on this?
    - amznthrwaway 6y ago
      Tether is largely used to run pump scams on BTC. It's other uses are marginal at best. It is common for Coiners to remain willfully ignorant about the price manipulation, because y'all don't want to admit how small, fragile, and wildly corrupt your ecosystem is.
      - marcell 6y ago
        I'm just not clear on how Tether usage specifically increases the bitcoin price. My understanding is it's used to transfer money between exchanges, and possibly to fund ICO's. Neither of those really lead to an increased bitcoin price.
narrator 6y ago
"That statement is absolutely true, as a conditional. But the logical fallacy it represents is "If X happens, that would be unthinkably bad. Therefore, X will not happen." (Similar thinking is behind coronavirus-denial and climate-change denial.)" This is called "Appeal to Consequences" "Appeal to consequences, also known as argumentum ad consequentiam (Latin for "argument to the consequence"), is an argument that concludes a hypothesis (typically a belief) to be either true or false based on whether the premise leads to desirable or undesirable consequences." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_consequences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_consequences
cryptica 6y ago
It has already happened and will get worse. The corporations backed by the Federal Reserve system have enslaved us and they're controlling what we can buy through targeted advertising, Cantillon effects of money printing and anti-competitive price gouging. They're giving free money to certain people based on arbitrary criteria related to how well connected they are to certain horrible people. If your worst enemy could print as much money as they wanted and you couldn't, would you gladly accept that money as payment for your work? I'll only accept it to the extent that I have to, everything else stays in crypto. I have no illusions, this is slavery. Slavery is a state of existence whereby you are forced to work for your enemy, to disproportionately enrich your enemy, in exchange for your own bare survival. This is exactly my predicament and that of many other people. I don't agree with the values of these so-called leaders, CEOs, politicians and bankers who control the world. They are the enemy. Do I really have freedom when the only viable jobs exist only serve to enrich my master at the expense of all value creators? The Federal Reserve system is a giant elaborate scam.
- goblin89 6y ago
  Whenever I come across the “hate the rich” sentiment (usually expressed in veiled forms, but sometimes not so much), I can’t help but read “I hate the rich and so-called successful people, because if I accept that system that would make me a loser”. It’s hard to imagine how things would go differently if people who currently possess a lot of capital (social, monetary—quote-unquote “control the world”) get replaced by people who have accumulated a lot of capital in cryptocurrency. Both enrich their networks (“buying prestige” among their connections), profit off leasing property, would stoop to price gouging, got rich by arbitrary criteria, try to maintain/expand their area of control and paint those who stand in the way as scammers, etc. The fundamental socioeconomic patterns remain the same. The mere virtue of being affiliated with either type of capital doesn’t say as much about a person as destructive hate towards.
  - lmpostor 6y ago
    Great analysis It's like he forgot that one of the major "features" of cryptocurrency is a quality that proliferates the sphere with scammers. I say this as someone with a very optimistic outlook, edge case usage is both the pinnacle and the opposite of virtue, we would do well to not forget the dark side. We need to keep it at "hopefully will solve problems" and leave it at that.
netcan 6y ago
I agree with you, but I don't think the author made a "therefore, X will not happen" claim, at least not a strong one. The ham radio analogy is quite good, up to a point. Bitcoin as an alternative, backup technology kept alive by enthusiasts. When disaster strikes, bitcoin will be there. It has a good sized market cap. There are some services. It could be used to pay for things or get your salary, it just isn't today because regular money. No need for ham radio while cellphones work, unless you're an enthusiast with your own reasons. I also think he has a point about narrative. Ham radio is ready to step up when disaster strikes. Bitcoin is ready to cash in. Make what you will of this normatively, but there's truth in the comparison. Where the analogy breaks down (and where I agree with you) is what happens next. Monetary systems have a history of collapsing, and then being constituted under new rules. Progress, such as it is, proceeds from one disaster to the next. Whether that's currency pegs, gold standard, whatever. Change happens in the wake of failure. If Bitcoin can be such a change, it will need an appropriate disaster. I do think it's worth examining narratives. Bitcoin has carried a heavy payload of narrative since day one. One such narrative was an organic, "disruption" trajectory. Bitcoin would gradually be adopted for transactions and build up. Maybe online shopping. Maybe remittances. There was much discussion of the roles of money: denomination, value transfer, etc. Bitcoin had a disintermediation narrative, potentially replacing CCs, retail banks and demonopolizing the space. Are these narratives still relevant? In retrospect, bitcoin's first decade narrative is "speculation." That's what drove interest, market cap, enthusiasm & price. Most users don't need a bitcoin wallet, they just their bank to make it an investable asset like an etfs. Other than making bitcoin owner rich, what does bitcoin want, these days?
- alwillis 6y ago
  Short answer: lots of people wanted Bitcoin to be decentralized PayPal… but those people lost. Bitcoin is a store of value; it's base money. It's the rainy day stash for when things go to shit. Not necessary a global economic collapse but bad nonetheless. Here's a rational prodcast description of the store of money vs. payment rails: https://stephanlivera.com/episode/185/ https://stephanlivera.com/episode/185/
deleted 6y ago
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tw04 6y ago
>The difference is that most hardcore Bitcoin investors also accept the premise that something seriously bad is going to happen to the monetary system. If something seriously bad happens to the monetary system what on earth makes you think bitcoin will even be a thing? If civilization collapses, who is going to keep the electricity flowing? What on earth makes you think anarchists won't attack that first? Without electricity, what use is bitcoin?
dnprock 6y ago
Not all bitcoiners are crazy. The crazy ones will eventually leave Bitcoin. I think Bitcoin can succeed without world collapse. Bitcoin has been a niche currency. The missing piece is adoption. There're proposals to address this problem. Lightning Network is one. But the hype dies down quite a bit. I think one missing piece is inflation. I focus my effort in this direction. Check out my project: https://bitflate.org/ https://bitflate.org/
- skohan 6y ago
  > The missing piece is adoption Here's the thing, in 2014 I was playing around a bit with Bitcoin, and at that point adoption seemed better than it is today. I could buy a cup of coffee with it, and many reputable online storefronts were already experimenting with accepting it as payment option. Later, long transaction times and high fees made it almost impossible to actually use BTC as a currency. My perception is that Bitcoin used to be a serious currency project, but got co-opted by speculators, miners and scammers wishing to use it to accumulate fiat currencies quickly.
- guiomie 6y ago
  I've got a problem lightning, I used to very bullish on the technology, but after trying wallets and reading about, the following make me think it can't succeed: Easy fiat onboard do not exist, and none seem to be coming. All of them you need to do KYC and interact with the main chain, its super unuser-friendly, or require debit cards. Taxable events get triggered when transacting with bitcoin. Really hard to manage and a really undesirable side-effect for a consumer. The need for watch towers and inbound-outbound capacity make the technology hard to understand not usable by mainstream. The lightning network seems to be heading toward centralization, then what it the point? Is the delta of Credit card transaction fees with lnd fees that big that it warrants it? especially if credit card fees drop with time.
  - dnprock 6y ago
    I think there will be centralization on 2nd layers like the Lightning Network. Bitcoin's mainchain is slow. Running full node is expensive. Decentralization comes with tradeoffs. Lightning tries to live up with Bitcoin's ethos. It's designed with decentralized nodes. We end up with 2 decentralized networks trying to talk to each other. The result is a very complicated 2nd layer. I think centralization can simplify a lot of things. As a user, I don't have a problem with it. Exchanges are already centralized. We just need more options to choose. I'm excited about 2nd layers. I think they would enable Bitcoin to interact with other technologies. I created Bitflate based on Bitcoin. We can mix Bitflate and Bitcoin to create hybrid coins. Some level of centralization is fine. It's a tradeoff for lower cost and better UX.
BbzzbB 6y ago
I'm not a crypto aficionado, but BTC is back to 10k USD which isn't that much worse then individual stocks going thru hard times (albeit very volatile against broad stock indexes). The balloon has deflated but it's far from being to the ground (albeit it did achieve scary lows for bagholders, which could be said of many riskier assets and stocks).
RichardHeart 6y ago
You said: "can't get rich on it anymore" All of Bitcoins bubble bursts have been great opportunities. So far Bitcoin has been up 2,000,000x from $0.01. Yet it's dripped 94.29%, 93.7%, 80.91%, 86.08%, 84.07% and 71.51% in 10 years.
- alwillis 6y ago
  It's up 75% since mid-March of 2020; you certainly could get rich from that.
  - skohan 6y ago
    It's generally easy to find two time points for a volatile asset with a wide price disparity. You could also get rich playing roulette, but to do so reliably would require some mechanism for predicting future values.
cmoscoso 6y ago
I experienced hyperinflation and the government did not collapse nor did the population become anarchist, just poorer.
Rallerbabs 6y ago
Author is trying to convince noone else but himself. I've added him to my crypto revenge bookmarks, which is full of toxi maxis, salty nocoiners and other crypto nay sayers. Will taunt in a few decades once bitcoin has successfully eaten the world.
Melting_Harps 6y ago
There are a lot of fallacies in this thread, that I could not address even if I wanted to expend the time, as most HN users are convinced of their belief the equates Bitcoin, and perhaps all of Cryptocurrency, to some nefarious end that challenges their way of Life. All while undermining that some of the prominent people in this Space are Jack Dorsey and the Winklevoss twins, not to mention some other well known VCs. To that end, I think this is worth challenging: > I think that most hardcore Bitcoin aficionados (the group that's still in it, even now that the bubble has burst and you can't get rich off of it) would accept the above premise. If Bitcoin becomes successful, something seriously bad has happened to the monetary system. I'm that 'aficionado' and I disagree with this premise: I do, however, think something has gone terribly wrong with the monetary system; not just in the US but in regards to all fiat currencies for a very long time. There was a time I was proponent of the PM backed State sanctioned systems back in my Mises book thumping days, but I've come to realize that it's just an archaic model and doesn't suit the 21st century model of how commerce is conducted at best, and that Fiat is a system with a disastrous inevitability at worst, which is the most common outcome as most fiat currencies have an average lifespan of 40 years when Nation-States are involved in managing a currency. The Internet has enabled a much larger collective of Humanity to come together than any other time in History, and while that may have some horrible implications (the cesspool that is Social media comes to mind) it also has a large Freedom enhancing component that most cannot actualize as they're limited in finding ways to obtain financial autonomy in doing so, which is why the Internet needs a Native currency irrespective of irrelevant things like Nationality, Gender or political identity. With that said, I think you're undermining something very significant here, that is, the amount of transactions in global commerce that Square currently handles could all operate on the back-end on Bitcoin's LN for faster settlement, and require less security measures, like payment holdings for those customers deemed 'higher risk.' And this could be further increased as Jack [1] has made a commitment to reside in Africa to address this onboarding challenge. This is a real usecase, that I personally have very intimate knowledge of as I did Fintech in the Industrial Hemp space and used Bitcoin to overcome the egregious financial censorship they faced before the Farm Bill made Hemp 50 State legal in the US. Bank account seizures were the norm and having all your savings or operating capital taken from you because of a perceived threat can be entirely mitigated in a system that is fully audited by default, that is to say, you cannot incur the losses of a charge-back scam if/when you swipe your CC for a purchase you're on-boarded onto the LN and you're none the wiser of what just took place as you received your goods-services just as you would with any CC transaction made elsewhere. And this is just one of the benefits of using the LN to transact on, the others being instant settlement times, and near 0 tx fees, as opposed to Main-net costs and transactions settlement times (new block). I think that is what is likely to happen with Square/CASH, as Jack has been one of the main investors in Lightening Labs. This alone disproves the notion that the World would have had to collapse to achieve the goal that goal--something that has admittedly kept me awake at night, and I have spoken to several developers and entrepreneurs about throughout my time in Bitcoin. After nearly 9 years in this space, and that time has flown by, I think it's a Crypto Nerd's wet-dream/panacea to think that everyone wants to be their own Bank, or simply be unbanked because those that need it the most are almost entirely unfamiliar with the concept entirely, and they will some how decide to run their own nodes they run on a meshnet based protocol and are using a Blockstream satelite to verify and update the Blockchain with. It's theoretically possible but entirely unrealistic because its far more time and effort than most people want to expend, and the reality is many would prefer to make MANY compromises to just have system that 'works' without worrying about the mechanics of it all and have the guesswork taken out and have a turn-key solution. I equate to how people are almost entirely unaware of how an ICE works, or electricity running through the wires runs and powers all of the devices in their homes. It's up to entrepreneurs and engineers to not just create a superior product in this case a monetary system, which I would argue we have had for some time, but also to create an interface that ensures the least amount of friction to onboard the rest of the 'non-initiated,' and I argue we've been in this phase since about 2016 or so. Bitcoin will have truly succeeded and fulfilled it's true potential for the masses when it's users are entirely unaware they are using it is my new benchmark for success, because for the initiated its already pretty damn seamless from where it was 8-9 years ago if you're already within it and that was just scratching the surface of what it's capable of doing within a very small, albeit determined demographic, which has had significant disruption all over the World already. I'm excited of the World(s) it could create (as Bitcoin remain one of the few viable options for a Multi-planetary monetary system) and is one of the main reasons why I remain optimistic despite all the calamity we see in the World. 1: https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/29/tech/jack-dorsey-africa-future/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/29/tech/jack-dorsey-africa-futur...
johnrgrace 6y ago
Could the bitcoin network actually be used by everone in the world in five years? No. At seven transactions per second, and 157,680,000 seconds, the network doesn't have enough capacity in a five year period for every person in north america and europe to do one transaction.
- alwillis 6y ago
  No. At seven transactions per second, and 157,680,000 seconds, the network doesn't have enough capacity in a five year period for every person in north america and europe to do one transaction. There's plenty of capacity to transact via the Lightning Network—over 13,000 nodes and 37,000 channels: https://1ml.com/statistics https://1ml.com/statistics
alwillis 6y ago
I think that most hardcore Bitcoin aficionados (the group that's still in it, even now that the bubble has burst and you can't get rich off of it) Um… you do know Bitcoin is up 75% since mid-March, right? You certainly could haven gotten rich from that [1]. There doesn't have to be catastrophic collapse… the US government is doing devaluing the dollar all on its own. The dollar has lost 40% of its value since 1985 and 80% since 1970 [2]. And now with COVID-19, we’re printing trillions of dollars to keep the country and the global economy afloat. The pandemic is out of control in large chunk of the US; we're hitting new daily infection rates nearly everyday. If you look at the big picture, we're experiencing a slow-motion economic collapse. The Fed and the other central banks are trying to land this 747 without crashing while the plane is on fire and and the equipment ain't working so good. Meanwhile, the only asset that can't be manipulated or inflated is Bitcoin and that's going to be looking pretty good once we land… remember, any landing you can walk away from is a good one. [1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-12/jpmorgan-says-bitcoin-crash-survival-shows-it-has-staying-power https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-12/jpmorgan-... [2]: https://seekingalpha.com/article/137051-the-dollars-20th-century-decline https://seekingalpha.com/article/137051-the-dollars-20th-cen...

harikb 6y ago

There is a way for people who have imagination like you to get rich in the current world though - turn this into a Netflix movie or series :)

rorykoehler 6y ago

Very good insight. I agree 100%. My hypothesis is that the massive injection of new cash into the stock market during the pandemic response is a foundational play for the end of the US dollar. I'm not sure of the steps between the cash injection and the adoption of cryptocurrency/ies as the de facto currency/ies but I am certain that this is a calculated attempt to debase the US dollar in order to disarm the unprepared and grab power through the creation a right-libertarian techno dystopia. This is exactly the type of play Steve Bannon would make. FWIW I hold no crypto so I'm not coming at this from the crypto-bro skin in the game angle.

save_ferris 6y ago
> but I am certain that this is a calculated attempt to debase the US dollar in order to disarm the unprepared and grab power through the creation a right-libertarian techno dystopia What makes you think this is more plausible than the Fed printing money to keep millions of people from starving/getting evicted and businesses to stay afloat amid one of the worst financial crises in history?
- rorykoehler 6y ago
  Because 1) of who got the money and 2) how it was spent. If they were serious about what you describe they'd provide a basic income directly to the people.
  - nostrademons 6y ago
    That's kinda what they did - they gave $600/week to every unemployed American, on top of what the state was giving them. Problem was, a lot of it just went into the stock market, and from there into the pockets of wealthy stockholders.

fossuser 6y ago

I agree on the fallacy, but arguably that also aligns with some of the HAM radio community? Maybe this stereotype isn't true, but I thought at least a part of the HAM radio community was preparing for the collapse of civilization/communication networks.

usrusr 6y ago
The preparedness of "I'll be able to help if that situation happens" is a very different kind of preparedness than "I'll be rich if that happens". There may be a few people that are interested in bitcoin for reasons that are similar to those found in HAM radio, but it's impossible to disentangle bitcoin from the associated greed.
nostrademons 6y ago
I think it does apply to much of the HAM radio community. Probably not all though. Also, their preparedness actually has paid off in past natural disasters - 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the Andaman Islands tsunami, and Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico all had robust HAM radio community responses.
NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
But ham radio is independent of infrastructure, in a way that internet technologies are not. For HF radio over large distances (hundreds of kms at least), all you need is for the physical properties of the ionosphere to remain constant, and a smallish amount of electrical power.

harryh 6y ago

You know what's definitely going to be valuable in a post collapse world where people are making heavy use of bug-out bunkers stashed with food and guns? A digital currency that requires a sophisticated global computer network to function. Ya. That makes a lot of sense.

pixelperfect 6y ago
The world reserve currency can collapse without all of society collapsing to the extent you are suggesting.
zxcmx 6y ago
A more charitable approach would be to consider that bitcoin and "bug out bags" can be things you have for separate or related contingencies. We live in wonderfully complex societies and history shows us there are a lot of failure modes well short of apocalypse. To be clear I'm not a "bug out bag" kind of person but I do believe that some disaster preparation is useful. I also believe that there's a modest chance of serious financial turmoil in the medium to long term future. Bitcoin is likely to hold some value in the event of a localised financial collapse.
- bioipbiop 6y ago
  What’s the advantage of bitcoin against holding a diversified bundle of global equities or foreign currency in the event of a localised financial collapse?
  - Taek 6y ago
    Bitcoin can be sent and received anywhere in the world needing no than a raspi's worth of computing power. Not many banking hoops to jump through, sanctions aren't at play, very difficult / impossible for a non-superpower country to exert control. Greece and Venezuela are both recent examples of countries where people who owned Bitcoin faired substantially better than their peers who did not.
    - 6y ago

steerablesafe 6y ago

> "If X happens, that would be unthinkably bad. Therefore, X will not happen." or "If X happens, that would be unthinkably bad. Therefore planning for X is futile."

devalgo 6y ago

What's the minimum number of bitcoin nodes needed for it to continue operating and is it reasonable to think that post collapse that many PCs will remain online? Seems unlikely to me.

monokh 6y ago
2 powered raspberry pis and a moderately functioning internet is the answer. The network adjusts it's requirement for power based on the total power thrown at it. This is called "difficulty adjustment". Beyond total world collapse that would set society back a century, I cannot imagine a scenario where you couldn't continue running Bitcoin as long as a few people had the motivation.
- exdsq 6y ago
  Solar flare?
- Sebb767 6y ago
  If they had the motivation, yes. However, why would the have the motivation instead of simply using well-known limited physical currencies, such as cigarettes, gold etc? Especially since you'd need to make the money using power and if power is sparse, you'd probably need the bit you get for refrigeration or cooking.
friendzis 6y ago
Minimum? 1. That is, however, not the problem. The problem is that in the event of sudden loss of significant fraction of compute power block times skyrocket, because significantly reduced compute power still has to solve problem of previous difficulty. As a consequence block times become so high that transactions are effectively blocked and the only solution to keep the network functional is a fork. Unless you imagine a scenario where everyone goes offline except for a small group and everyone slowly reconnects to the small group, most likely there would be highly partitioned network with its own bitcoin fork with enough of transaction history that a reconnect would mean collapse of local-economy.
- 6y ago

xiphias2 6y ago

,,If Bitcoin becomes successful, something seriously bad has happened to the monetary system.'' I'm a hardcore Bitcoin believer, and I believe something similar, although not exactly the same: Something seriously bad happened to the monetary system (in 1971), therefore I believe Bitcoin will become successful (in the next 10-20 years).

skohan 6y ago
As a bitcoin believer, what do you think about Tether, and the reports that the run-up of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in 2017 was essentially due to price manipulation via the injection of billions of dollars worth of faked value into the system?
- marcell 6y ago
  Not OP, but I would say: (1) Tether is largely orthogonal to bitcoin. It's a way to trade USD more quickly over the internet, which isn't really related to bitcoin, besides the underlying technology is similar. (2) I don't know much about the 2017 run-up in terms of price manipulation. I think Ethereum was more impacted than bitcoin, but of course both experienced price surges and crashes. Is there any public info available on this?
  - amznthrwaway 6y ago
    Tether is largely used to run pump scams on BTC. It's other uses are marginal at best. It is common for Coiners to remain willfully ignorant about the price manipulation, because y'all don't want to admit how small, fragile, and wildly corrupt your ecosystem is.
    - marcell 6y ago
      I'm just not clear on how Tether usage specifically increases the bitcoin price. My understanding is it's used to transfer money between exchanges, and possibly to fund ICO's. Neither of those really lead to an increased bitcoin price.

narrator 6y ago

"That statement is absolutely true, as a conditional. But the logical fallacy it represents is "If X happens, that would be unthinkably bad. Therefore, X will not happen." (Similar thinking is behind coronavirus-denial and climate-change denial.)" This is called "Appeal to Consequences" "Appeal to consequences, also known as argumentum ad consequentiam (Latin for "argument to the consequence"), is an argument that concludes a hypothesis (typically a belief) to be either true or false based on whether the premise leads to desirable or undesirable consequences." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_consequences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_consequences

cryptica 6y ago

It has already happened and will get worse. The corporations backed by the Federal Reserve system have enslaved us and they're controlling what we can buy through targeted advertising, Cantillon effects of money printing and anti-competitive price gouging. They're giving free money to certain people based on arbitrary criteria related to how well connected they are to certain horrible people. If your worst enemy could print as much money as they wanted and you couldn't, would you gladly accept that money as payment for your work? I'll only accept it to the extent that I have to, everything else stays in crypto. I have no illusions, this is slavery. Slavery is a state of existence whereby you are forced to work for your enemy, to disproportionately enrich your enemy, in exchange for your own bare survival. This is exactly my predicament and that of many other people. I don't agree with the values of these so-called leaders, CEOs, politicians and bankers who control the world. They are the enemy. Do I really have freedom when the only viable jobs exist only serve to enrich my master at the expense of all value creators? The Federal Reserve system is a giant elaborate scam.

goblin89 6y ago
Whenever I come across the “hate the rich” sentiment (usually expressed in veiled forms, but sometimes not so much), I can’t help but read “I hate the rich and so-called successful people, because if I accept that system that would make me a loser”. It’s hard to imagine how things would go differently if people who currently possess a lot of capital (social, monetary—quote-unquote “control the world”) get replaced by people who have accumulated a lot of capital in cryptocurrency. Both enrich their networks (“buying prestige” among their connections), profit off leasing property, would stoop to price gouging, got rich by arbitrary criteria, try to maintain/expand their area of control and paint those who stand in the way as scammers, etc. The fundamental socioeconomic patterns remain the same. The mere virtue of being affiliated with either type of capital doesn’t say as much about a person as destructive hate towards.
- lmpostor 6y ago
  Great analysis It's like he forgot that one of the major "features" of cryptocurrency is a quality that proliferates the sphere with scammers. I say this as someone with a very optimistic outlook, edge case usage is both the pinnacle and the opposite of virtue, we would do well to not forget the dark side. We need to keep it at "hopefully will solve problems" and leave it at that.

netcan 6y ago

I agree with you, but I don't think the author made a "therefore, X will not happen" claim, at least not a strong one. The ham radio analogy is quite good, up to a point. Bitcoin as an alternative, backup technology kept alive by enthusiasts. When disaster strikes, bitcoin will be there. It has a good sized market cap. There are some services. It could be used to pay for things or get your salary, it just isn't today because regular money. No need for ham radio while cellphones work, unless you're an enthusiast with your own reasons. I also think he has a point about narrative. Ham radio is ready to step up when disaster strikes. Bitcoin is ready to cash in. Make what you will of this normatively, but there's truth in the comparison. Where the analogy breaks down (and where I agree with you) is what happens next. Monetary systems have a history of collapsing, and then being constituted under new rules. Progress, such as it is, proceeds from one disaster to the next. Whether that's currency pegs, gold standard, whatever. Change happens in the wake of failure. If Bitcoin can be such a change, it will need an appropriate disaster. I do think it's worth examining narratives. Bitcoin has carried a heavy payload of narrative since day one. One such narrative was an organic, "disruption" trajectory. Bitcoin would gradually be adopted for transactions and build up. Maybe online shopping. Maybe remittances. There was much discussion of the roles of money: denomination, value transfer, etc. Bitcoin had a disintermediation narrative, potentially replacing CCs, retail banks and demonopolizing the space. Are these narratives still relevant? In retrospect, bitcoin's first decade narrative is "speculation." That's what drove interest, market cap, enthusiasm & price. Most users don't need a bitcoin wallet, they just their bank to make it an investable asset like an etfs. Other than making bitcoin owner rich, what does bitcoin want, these days?

alwillis 6y ago
Short answer: lots of people wanted Bitcoin to be decentralized PayPal… but those people lost. Bitcoin is a store of value; it's base money. It's the rainy day stash for when things go to shit. Not necessary a global economic collapse but bad nonetheless. Here's a rational prodcast description of the store of money vs. payment rails: https://stephanlivera.com/episode/185/ https://stephanlivera.com/episode/185/

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tw04 6y ago

>The difference is that most hardcore Bitcoin investors also accept the premise that something seriously bad is going to happen to the monetary system. If something seriously bad happens to the monetary system what on earth makes you think bitcoin will even be a thing? If civilization collapses, who is going to keep the electricity flowing? What on earth makes you think anarchists won't attack that first? Without electricity, what use is bitcoin?

dnprock 6y ago

Not all bitcoiners are crazy. The crazy ones will eventually leave Bitcoin. I think Bitcoin can succeed without world collapse. Bitcoin has been a niche currency. The missing piece is adoption. There're proposals to address this problem. Lightning Network is one. But the hype dies down quite a bit. I think one missing piece is inflation. I focus my effort in this direction. Check out my project: https://bitflate.org/ https://bitflate.org/

skohan 6y ago
> The missing piece is adoption Here's the thing, in 2014 I was playing around a bit with Bitcoin, and at that point adoption seemed better than it is today. I could buy a cup of coffee with it, and many reputable online storefronts were already experimenting with accepting it as payment option. Later, long transaction times and high fees made it almost impossible to actually use BTC as a currency. My perception is that Bitcoin used to be a serious currency project, but got co-opted by speculators, miners and scammers wishing to use it to accumulate fiat currencies quickly.
guiomie 6y ago
I've got a problem lightning, I used to very bullish on the technology, but after trying wallets and reading about, the following make me think it can't succeed: Easy fiat onboard do not exist, and none seem to be coming. All of them you need to do KYC and interact with the main chain, its super unuser-friendly, or require debit cards. Taxable events get triggered when transacting with bitcoin. Really hard to manage and a really undesirable side-effect for a consumer. The need for watch towers and inbound-outbound capacity make the technology hard to understand not usable by mainstream. The lightning network seems to be heading toward centralization, then what it the point? Is the delta of Credit card transaction fees with lnd fees that big that it warrants it? especially if credit card fees drop with time.
- dnprock 6y ago
  I think there will be centralization on 2nd layers like the Lightning Network. Bitcoin's mainchain is slow. Running full node is expensive. Decentralization comes with tradeoffs. Lightning tries to live up with Bitcoin's ethos. It's designed with decentralized nodes. We end up with 2 decentralized networks trying to talk to each other. The result is a very complicated 2nd layer. I think centralization can simplify a lot of things. As a user, I don't have a problem with it. Exchanges are already centralized. We just need more options to choose. I'm excited about 2nd layers. I think they would enable Bitcoin to interact with other technologies. I created Bitflate based on Bitcoin. We can mix Bitflate and Bitcoin to create hybrid coins. Some level of centralization is fine. It's a tradeoff for lower cost and better UX.

BbzzbB 6y ago

I'm not a crypto aficionado, but BTC is back to 10k USD which isn't that much worse then individual stocks going thru hard times (albeit very volatile against broad stock indexes). The balloon has deflated but it's far from being to the ground (albeit it did achieve scary lows for bagholders, which could be said of many riskier assets and stocks).

RichardHeart 6y ago

You said: "can't get rich on it anymore" All of Bitcoins bubble bursts have been great opportunities. So far Bitcoin has been up 2,000,000x from $0.01. Yet it's dripped 94.29%, 93.7%, 80.91%, 86.08%, 84.07% and 71.51% in 10 years.

alwillis 6y ago
It's up 75% since mid-March of 2020; you certainly could get rich from that.
- skohan 6y ago
  It's generally easy to find two time points for a volatile asset with a wide price disparity. You could also get rich playing roulette, but to do so reliably would require some mechanism for predicting future values.

cmoscoso 6y ago

I experienced hyperinflation and the government did not collapse nor did the population become anarchist, just poorer.

Rallerbabs 6y ago

Author is trying to convince noone else but himself. I've added him to my crypto revenge bookmarks, which is full of toxi maxis, salty nocoiners and other crypto nay sayers. Will taunt in a few decades once bitcoin has successfully eaten the world.

Melting_Harps 6y ago

There are a lot of fallacies in this thread, that I could not address even if I wanted to expend the time, as most HN users are convinced of their belief the equates Bitcoin, and perhaps all of Cryptocurrency, to some nefarious end that challenges their way of Life. All while undermining that some of the prominent people in this Space are Jack Dorsey and the Winklevoss twins, not to mention some other well known VCs. To that end, I think this is worth challenging: > I think that most hardcore Bitcoin aficionados (the group that's still in it, even now that the bubble has burst and you can't get rich off of it) would accept the above premise. If Bitcoin becomes successful, something seriously bad has happened to the monetary system. I'm that 'aficionado' and I disagree with this premise: I do, however, think something has gone terribly wrong with the monetary system; not just in the US but in regards to all fiat currencies for a very long time. There was a time I was proponent of the PM backed State sanctioned systems back in my Mises book thumping days, but I've come to realize that it's just an archaic model and doesn't suit the 21st century model of how commerce is conducted at best, and that Fiat is a system with a disastrous inevitability at worst, which is the most common outcome as most fiat currencies have an average lifespan of 40 years when Nation-States are involved in managing a currency. The Internet has enabled a much larger collective of Humanity to come together than any other time in History, and while that may have some horrible implications (the cesspool that is Social media comes to mind) it also has a large Freedom enhancing component that most cannot actualize as they're limited in finding ways to obtain financial autonomy in doing so, which is why the Internet needs a Native currency irrespective of irrelevant things like Nationality, Gender or political identity. With that said, I think you're undermining something very significant here, that is, the amount of transactions in global commerce that Square currently handles could all operate on the back-end on Bitcoin's LN for faster settlement, and require less security measures, like payment holdings for those customers deemed 'higher risk.' And this could be further increased as Jack [1] has made a commitment to reside in Africa to address this onboarding challenge. This is a real usecase, that I personally have very intimate knowledge of as I did Fintech in the Industrial Hemp space and used Bitcoin to overcome the egregious financial censorship they faced before the Farm Bill made Hemp 50 State legal in the US. Bank account seizures were the norm and having all your savings or operating capital taken from you because of a perceived threat can be entirely mitigated in a system that is fully audited by default, that is to say, you cannot incur the losses of a charge-back scam if/when you swipe your CC for a purchase you're on-boarded onto the LN and you're none the wiser of what just took place as you received your goods-services just as you would with any CC transaction made elsewhere. And this is just one of the benefits of using the LN to transact on, the others being instant settlement times, and near 0 tx fees, as opposed to Main-net costs and transactions settlement times (new block). I think that is what is likely to happen with Square/CASH, as Jack has been one of the main investors in Lightening Labs. This alone disproves the notion that the World would have had to collapse to achieve the goal that goal--something that has admittedly kept me awake at night, and I have spoken to several developers and entrepreneurs about throughout my time in Bitcoin. After nearly 9 years in this space, and that time has flown by, I think it's a Crypto Nerd's wet-dream/panacea to think that everyone wants to be their own Bank, or simply be unbanked because those that need it the most are almost entirely unfamiliar with the concept entirely, and they will some how decide to run their own nodes they run on a meshnet based protocol and are using a Blockstream satelite to verify and update the Blockchain with. It's theoretically possible but entirely unrealistic because its far more time and effort than most people want to expend, and the reality is many would prefer to make MANY compromises to just have system that 'works' without worrying about the mechanics of it all and have the guesswork taken out and have a turn-key solution. I equate to how people are almost entirely unaware of how an ICE works, or electricity running through the wires runs and powers all of the devices in their homes. It's up to entrepreneurs and engineers to not just create a superior product in this case a monetary system, which I would argue we have had for some time, but also to create an interface that ensures the least amount of friction to onboard the rest of the 'non-initiated,' and I argue we've been in this phase since about 2016 or so. Bitcoin will have truly succeeded and fulfilled it's true potential for the masses when it's users are entirely unaware they are using it is my new benchmark for success, because for the initiated its already pretty damn seamless from where it was 8-9 years ago if you're already within it and that was just scratching the surface of what it's capable of doing within a very small, albeit determined demographic, which has had significant disruption all over the World already. I'm excited of the World(s) it could create (as Bitcoin remain one of the few viable options for a Multi-planetary monetary system) and is one of the main reasons why I remain optimistic despite all the calamity we see in the World. 1: https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/29/tech/jack-dorsey-africa-future/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/29/tech/jack-dorsey-africa-futur...

johnrgrace 6y ago

Could the bitcoin network actually be used by everone in the world in five years? No. At seven transactions per second, and 157,680,000 seconds, the network doesn't have enough capacity in a five year period for every person in north america and europe to do one transaction.

alwillis 6y ago
No. At seven transactions per second, and 157,680,000 seconds, the network doesn't have enough capacity in a five year period for every person in north america and europe to do one transaction. There's plenty of capacity to transact via the Lightning Network—over 13,000 nodes and 37,000 channels: https://1ml.com/statistics https://1ml.com/statistics

alwillis 6y ago

I think that most hardcore Bitcoin aficionados (the group that's still in it, even now that the bubble has burst and you can't get rich off of it) Um… you do know Bitcoin is up 75% since mid-March, right? You certainly could haven gotten rich from that [1]. There doesn't have to be catastrophic collapse… the US government is doing devaluing the dollar all on its own. The dollar has lost 40% of its value since 1985 and 80% since 1970 [2]. And now with COVID-19, we’re printing trillions of dollars to keep the country and the global economy afloat. The pandemic is out of control in large chunk of the US; we're hitting new daily infection rates nearly everyday. If you look at the big picture, we're experiencing a slow-motion economic collapse. The Fed and the other central banks are trying to land this 747 without crashing while the plane is on fire and and the equipment ain't working so good. Meanwhile, the only asset that can't be manipulated or inflated is Bitcoin and that's going to be looking pretty good once we land… remember, any landing you can walk away from is a good one. [1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-12/jpmorgan-says-bitcoin-crash-survival-shows-it-has-staying-power https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-12/jpmorgan-... [2]: https://seekingalpha.com/article/137051-the-dollars-20th-century-decline https://seekingalpha.com/article/137051-the-dollars-20th-cen...