9 ms·

It's kinda sad that the pricing or market capitalization is the only thing that is being talked about in the "cryptocurrency community", instead of focussing on

by jdu9 6y ago

It's kinda sad that the pricing or market capitalization is the only thing that is being talked about in the "cryptocurrency community", instead of focussing on how the technology can be useful for society. Like for example if you look at /r/Bitcoin, there's a sidebar with "Submit text/link NOT about price", yet virtually every post is about price, even if just indirectly (Paypal joins the cryptocurrency bandwagon and the top comments are that this is good for the price). Searching for Bitcoin on YouTube is likewise not a good idea unless you want to listen to dudes rambling about the price for hours. Back when I bought my first Bitcoin, I couldn't care less about the price. I spent it almost immediately for servers and other digital services. I don't regret that I didn't "HODL" it. What really counts is whether it is sound money and all the speculation doesn't help in that regard. If anything, the usefulness of e.g. Bitcoin declines due to rising transaction costs and constant price swings.

ur-whale 6y ago
Thank you for this, and I totally agree. The price of Bitcoin is largely irrelevant given how interesting the tech. that powers it actually is. Bitcoin is a fluid that aims to power a hydraulic machine, and once Lightning gets to where it should be (it's been a while, yes :\), my bet is that many of the naysayers will have no choice but to take a second look at it. The rise in price is just a side-effect.
Entwickler 6y ago
I'd suggest following ethereum and it's founder Vitalik. He's explicitly said things like, "If all that we accomplish is lambo memes and immature puns about "sharting", then I WILL leave. Though I still have a lot of hope that the community can steer in the right direction." He has worked with the UN world food program, and posts a lot of material on voting, economic fairness, and social aspects of blockchain in general. It seems like he is genuinely interested in using blockchain for general societal good, rather than just speculative price chasing.
- dontTango 6y ago
  Ethereum removed the 100M soft cap on EIP 669. This was quietly slipped through with no debate. ETH shouldn't be trusted.
  - Entwickler 6y ago
    Can you provide evidence of no debate, and reasons on why the soft cap is a bad idea when transactions burn eth anyways and the eth inflation rate is around 4% per year, and slated to drop to 0.5%-2.0% with the transition to ETH 2.0?
    - whoisninja 6y ago
      typical monetary policy issue, if it is easy to change - they will keep changing
  - rodiger 6y ago
    Inflation is good for currencies / anything that's meant to be used.
    - spurgu 6y ago
      One exception to this that pops to mind is computers, which have gradually gotten cheaper. Even though you always get a better one if you wait, it hasn't deterred consumers.
      - a1369209993 6y ago
        That's not a exception; in fact it's probably the most blatant supporting evidence available for "Inflation is good for [...] anything that's meant to be used.". Computers have been undergoing borderline hyperinflation (factor of two every year-and-a-half or so) for decades, and this is extremely good for anyone who wants to use a computer.
        ogogmad 6y ago
        You got it the wrong way round. Deflation means when prices are dropping. The price of computers has fallen over time predictably and exponentially, and yet that hasn't stopped people from buying them. The Keynesian argument against deflation is that it disincentivizes people from spending money as they expect prices to drop. This disincentive hasn't prevented the computer industry from being a huge success. The fact that you know that if you wait some time you can get a faster and cheaper computer doesn't prevent you ad infinitum from buying computers.
- drcross 6y ago
  DAO rollback made them untrustable for me. You do you but a key required feature of my cryptocurrency should be sovereignty.
  - anonymousDan 6y ago
    I hear this criticism a lot. And I don't disagree with it fundamentally, but I would be interested to hear how its advocates justify the decision. How do the Ethereum founders attempt to rebut it? Are there any good counterarguments?
    - abstrct 6y ago
      I'll preface the following by saying I fundamentally disagreed with rolling back the DAO as the entire purpose of these networks is immutability and their trustless nature. The reasons for it, even on their own, all make a lot of sense: - Ethereum has always wanted to move to Proof of Stake, a move that would have been impossible if 25% of the networks funds were suddenly in the hands of a nefarious actor. - The DAO was intended to seed development into projects that would benefit ethereum and the blockchain space as a whole. It was an incredible amount of capital that was all intended to help evolve the network. Losing all this capital and momentum would have been detrimental to that goal. - The DAO was arguably an unlicensed security and losing the funds of that many investors would have been a problem for many who had a hand in building it. By returning investments, they basically made this a non-issue. So again, do I agree with the choice? Absolutely not, you should not proclaim "code is law!" until it's inconvenient for you. Did they have a choice? No, the roll-back was inevitable as soon as the DAO contract was deployed.
    - blurpesec 6y ago
      Some rebuttal: 1) There wasn't a rollback of the blockchain - the method to fix this was an irregular state change (I.e - at block z, change balance at address x to address y). This was only possible because the nature of the attack left all of the compromised funds locked in place for 30 days. Arguably, if it required a rollback of the blockchain, people probably wouldn't have gone along with it. (Though node operators and miners may still have as evidenced by the bitcoin supply bug and rollback in 2010) 2) The funds in the DAO at the time were roughly 14% of the total supply at the time. This is ~1.5x the amount of ether currently custodied by the largest ether custodians today. 3) The common argument of this event being a slippery slope and that it would lead to frequent recovery of hacked funds has turned out to be false. 4) Since the state change was introduced as a software upgrade, node operators (mining pools & infrastructure providers) all had to opt into the change - which a large majority did. This would indicate that most organizations and individuals were either in favor of this solution or were apathetic to the solution
mam2 6y ago
Bitcoin is useless for any legal activity. change my mind with an actual existing application that's not done by anything else.
- drcross 6y ago
  Transferring international remittance on a weekend. good enough for you?
  - mam2 6y ago
    not bad but omg the fees. who does that except 4 nerds in morroco
627467 6y ago
I don't think its fair to say it's "the only thing", although I'll give it that its the most popular aspect that it's talked about. The truth is excitement and hype around price is the lowest common denominator for people interested in cryptocurrency so naturally it would be the most visible topic. Tech around this is still very... technical, young non-vital, niche. I understand why people worry and even discard the value of price-obsession, but (at least for bitcoin) price of the token (along with other variables that indicate adoption) is crucial for security and growth of the platform. Even Satoshi recognized that hype-cycles would be important for adoption of bitcoin.
- xur17 6y ago
  > The truth is excitement and hype around price is the lowest common denominator for people interested in cryptocurrency so naturally it would be the most visible topic. Echoing this, I'm involved in several more technical cryptocurrency groups, and there is little reference to the price, even today. Pretty much all of the discussion is around the technology itself, and what it can do.
  - ackbar03 6y ago
    What can it do exactly though? A lot of talk about decentralization and distributed database and Yada Yada Yada. I'd love to find a good use case for blockchain but so far it's elusive
    - xur17 6y ago
      Cash on the internet. Basically, the ability to send money to someone else without any intermediary, in the same way that you can hand cash to someone else when selling something on craigslist, etc. This is particularly helpful in cases like gift cards where fraud is a problem, and margins are thin, and industries that are blocked by other payment processors [0]. We can argue about whether or not all of the opportunities are a good thing for society or not, but crypto does solve a problem for them. [0] https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/14/business/mastercard-visa-discover-pornhub/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/14/business/mastercard-visa-disc...
tboyd47 6y ago
If you're looking for more substantive discussion among Bitcoiners, touching on its relation to economics, politics, and society, YouTube and Reddit are not the spots. I'd try Twitter. Start with @saifedean and go from there.
- elefanten 6y ago
  A cursory glance at his feed did not instill confidence. Seemed like a pop business huckster.
  - cocktailpeanuts 6y ago
    Yes because he is. These are the people who are spearheading this whole environment being criticized in this thread.
- h1bthrowaway 6y ago
  Substantive discussion on twitter?
- Taek 6y ago
  Twitter is an odd suggestion. I think the highest signal-to-noise ratio is probably podcasts. I'd start with 'On the Brink' and 'Uncommon Core'.
  - tboyd47 6y ago
    Thanks for the suggestions. I was mainly recommending Twitter as a jumping off point.
flyGuyOnTheSly 6y ago
>It's kinda sad that the pricing or market capitalization is the only thing that is being talked about in the "cryptocurrency community", instead of focussing on how the technology can be useful for society. The serious crypto currency developers out there who are working on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Stellar, and a few others are definitely focused on how the technology can be useful for society and they have been so for years. That's why their prices are going up (over time, not today specifically)... because a lot of people with a lot of money see the potential value of holding them. But yes in general 99% of the "community" you see in crypto related social media spheres only cares about price and profit, I would agree with that statement.
bitobserver 6y ago
I get the impression that 99% of those invested in crypto just want their investment to perform well, and could care less about any project specifics.
- HenryKissinger 6y ago
  Right. I couldn't care less if my stock transactions are processed by a computer algorithm, a group of cybernetically enhanced punk goblins in a vault below the Stock Exchange building, or intergalactic aliens. As long as it's processed.
capnorange 6y ago
The higher the price, the more useful Bitcoin is.
nostrademons 6y ago
I think this is representative of a bigger problem within the developed world: the top problem on many people's mind is "Other people have money and I don't." This manifests in a lot of other areas as well: stock market speculation, people asking for government handouts, folks looking for get-rich-quick startup ideas, glorification of the "side hustle", etc. And I think the root cause of that is that productivity growth in areas needed for basic survival - housing, health care, not getting screwed (legal) - hasn't grown nearly as fast as productivity in consumer goods. Combined with population growth and the entry of the developing world into the developed world, it means that more people are increasingly chasing the same limited pool of houses and doctors, and basically all disposable income goes to them. The focus on get-rich-quick schemes is a rational reaction to being stuck in a game of musical chairs where there are not enough chairs to go around.
- cryptica 6y ago
  Yes it's musical chairs; through monetary policy, reserve banks keep pulling out chairs and thus inflating the value of remaining chairs... Then they'll claim that this is all to prevent global warming. All this is actually starting to make me doubt global warming. The banks certainly never gave a damn about global warming before. Do I think that people in power suddenly became more altruistic over the past few years? No, from my experience, they became much more selfish! The whole timing with Greta Thunberg media hype followed by COVID19 then multi-trillion dollar bailouts followed by talks of 'green new deals' and the great reset (which is actually just a continuation of existing policies; not a reset by any definition of the word) is starting to all look a bit too convenient. I've seen first hand how money can corrupt everything. So I'm wondering if it is the science which is attracting the money or the money which is attracting the 'science'. All the climate models are oversimplified and phony; it's pseudoscience... They have tens of thousands of different models and each year they cherry-pick the ones which guessed correctly... Then they keep switching to newer models which keeps proving them right claiming that they did so to keep up with technology (of course not because they were running out of correct old models to cherry pick from)... It's a joke.
  - SCUSKU 6y ago
jdhn 6y ago
/r/bitcoin is basically one giant pump and dump subreddit. Every now and then there are helpful threads that talk about actual progress being made in terms of the Bitcoin protocol/protocols that live on top of it (Lightning), but they're never really upvoted that much and don't spark a lot of conversation. That being said, I think that major Bitcoin forums like /r/bitcoin serve a good purpose because it acts as a containment board for people who just want to talk about the price.
filipmix 6y ago
> It's kinda sad that the pricing or market capitalization is the only thing that is being talked about in the "cryptocurrency community" Clearly price is a big topic of conversation. Nothing wrong with that. But you are very incorrect if you believe that is the only topic of conversation. Perhaps using /r/Bitcoin is not a valid sample size. In my day job, I'm neck deep in blockchain and cryptocurrency use cases - and there are conferences, webinars, real-world enterprise adoption, etc.
- Daishiman 6y ago
  Can you cite those use cases?
  - Taek 6y ago
    We're using blockchain technology to build a decentralized cloud where users can store data on remote hosts without having to trust them, and without giving up ownership of the data. The blockchain is a critical part of the infrastructure because the hosts need to be paid for the services they provide, but as untrusted entities we need assurances from them. Also, if you don't have a blockchain in the middle you need something like PayPal in the middle, which is a single point of failure.
Lammy 6y ago
> how the technology can be useful for society I think it's important to separate Bitcoin itself from the general concept of blockchains as a new type of data structure. Personally I think the real benefits to society will be had by applying Bitcoin's concepts to brand new unrelated things, and hopefully Bitcoin mindshare can help spark that creativity in people. To me, someone saying "The Blockchain" is like someone saying "The Linked-List". They're not thinking about it generically yet.
- Taek 6y ago
  A blockchain is a lot more than just a data structure, it's an entire governance system that needs a community around it and active maintenance, continually running nodes, etc. It is more like a discord server than it is like a data structure.
NoOneNew 6y ago
While I do agree that crypto needs to step away from the current "investment vehicle" mentality and be treated more like a "currency"... I'm still lost how yet another currency is going to help society. Im not trying to be an ass, I'm being serious on figuring this out. I constantly see this argument with no real logic other than trying to essentially use Marxist ideals of "redistribution of wealth" to a disenfranchised demographic. Yet trying to distribute a computer based/useful currency to folks that dont have running water let alone electricity also confuses me. Tag on that the current distribution of bitcoin is in the realm of 30% of users own some 90% of bitcoin wealth. That's a pretty shitty interpretation of redistribution of wealth. In truth, it pretty much follows the realized implementation of Marxism throughout history, "everyone needs to redistribute wealth to me and my friends and away from the people who already have it". Just saying "this will help the poor because they have nothing" over and over with no real plan, let alone action, doesn't make it true. One guy I argued with once told me about him donating his bitcoins to buy pizzas for people who needed it. Which, cool. That's awesome. But the donation argument makes it sound like people dont donate dollars or euros. Or even like theres some grand mechanism that makes bitcoin better than traditional currencies... even though crypto gets converted to traditional currency so it can become useful.
- pdpi 6y ago
  > Just saying "this will help the poor because they have nothing" over and over with no real plan, let alone action, doesn't make it true. I used to work at a bitcoin company, and we had large user communities in countries where the local currency was subject to very high inflation, and access to stabler currencies (like dollars or euros) was severely limited. We were actually helping proper deal with real problems, and we were proud of it. Then the investment-tool-for-rich-white-kids mentality took over. :(
  - NoOneNew 6y ago
    Okay... how does bitcoin differ from an unstable traditional currency? Both are subject to high and low swings to inflation and deflation. The one thing bitcoin has not been in its history is stable. This still ends up to being the equivalent to "there are 14 standards, let's make a standard to unify them... there are now 15 standards". Plus, all you described was a currency exchange with an extra step. You could replace bitcoin with rice commodity, wheat futures or Tesla stock and achieve the exact same thing. Again, "redistribute to my pocket" with extra steps. Look, I'm not trying to be a dick, but bitcoin was sold on the lie that it helps poor people. You're not wrong for wanting to help poor people. But people need to come to the realization that bitcoin has been Theranos-like the whole time. It's a waste of time if you're goal is to help the poor.
Siira 6y ago
Bitcoin can’t technically handle casual use. Perhaps the new ethereum will achieve that. The price is the only changing thing about Bitcoin.
josh_carterPDX 6y ago
I think this is an important point. So many people compare bitcoin to a regular stock. While there are ways you can compare the two, there aren't as many use cases for stocks as there are with bitcoin. If people would focus on that we could really change the way the underbanked access capital. It could be the thing that tips the scale to build equitable access to capital.
koonsolo 6y ago
Nano solved this on reddit by splitting off a nano_trading. That way the main channel is free of all the price bullshit.
woah 6y ago
You need to make a distinction between Bitcoin and other cryptos. For the past 6-7 years, bitcoin has defined itself as being a “store of value”, rather than doing anything technically new. With this being the only goal, nothing matters except for the price. Other cryptos such as Ethereum, Cosmos, and Ava have more of a technical focus.
Mc_Big_G 6y ago
Nobody talks about anything but price and manipulation in gold bug forums. Bitcoin in digital gold, not digital money.
CryptoPunk 6y ago
Up until 2015, price talk was heavily discouraged in /r/Bitcoin. It was all about adoption - new merchants accepting it, new people spending it, new use-cases enabled by its peer-to-peer electronic cash and immutable and permissionless record-keeping functionality, etc. Everything changed after the 'purge', where the head moderator took a harsh stance against members trying to build consensus for a hard fork that would help realize Bitcoin's potential as a global peer-to-peer electronic cash, and started banning people left and right. The Bitcoin subreddit turned into a full time price pumping forum after that. Ironically, Bitcoin saw more rapid price growth before 2015, when the primary topic of discussion was consciously steered away from price, than after.

by jdu9 6y ago

ur-whale 6y ago

Thank you for this, and I totally agree. The price of Bitcoin is largely irrelevant given how interesting the tech. that powers it actually is. Bitcoin is a fluid that aims to power a hydraulic machine, and once Lightning gets to where it should be (it's been a while, yes :\), my bet is that many of the naysayers will have no choice but to take a second look at it. The rise in price is just a side-effect.

Entwickler 6y ago

I'd suggest following ethereum and it's founder Vitalik. He's explicitly said things like, "If all that we accomplish is lambo memes and immature puns about "sharting", then I WILL leave. Though I still have a lot of hope that the community can steer in the right direction." He has worked with the UN world food program, and posts a lot of material on voting, economic fairness, and social aspects of blockchain in general. It seems like he is genuinely interested in using blockchain for general societal good, rather than just speculative price chasing.

dontTango 6y ago
Ethereum removed the 100M soft cap on EIP 669. This was quietly slipped through with no debate. ETH shouldn't be trusted.
- Entwickler 6y ago
  Can you provide evidence of no debate, and reasons on why the soft cap is a bad idea when transactions burn eth anyways and the eth inflation rate is around 4% per year, and slated to drop to 0.5%-2.0% with the transition to ETH 2.0?
  - whoisninja 6y ago
    typical monetary policy issue, if it is easy to change - they will keep changing
- rodiger 6y ago
  Inflation is good for currencies / anything that's meant to be used.
  - spurgu 6y ago
    One exception to this that pops to mind is computers, which have gradually gotten cheaper. Even though you always get a better one if you wait, it hasn't deterred consumers.
    - a1369209993 6y ago
      That's not a exception; in fact it's probably the most blatant supporting evidence available for "Inflation is good for [...] anything that's meant to be used.". Computers have been undergoing borderline hyperinflation (factor of two every year-and-a-half or so) for decades, and this is extremely good for anyone who wants to use a computer.
      - ogogmad 6y ago
        You got it the wrong way round. Deflation means when prices are dropping. The price of computers has fallen over time predictably and exponentially, and yet that hasn't stopped people from buying them. The Keynesian argument against deflation is that it disincentivizes people from spending money as they expect prices to drop. This disincentive hasn't prevented the computer industry from being a huge success. The fact that you know that if you wait some time you can get a faster and cheaper computer doesn't prevent you ad infinitum from buying computers.
drcross 6y ago
DAO rollback made them untrustable for me. You do you but a key required feature of my cryptocurrency should be sovereignty.
- anonymousDan 6y ago
  I hear this criticism a lot. And I don't disagree with it fundamentally, but I would be interested to hear how its advocates justify the decision. How do the Ethereum founders attempt to rebut it? Are there any good counterarguments?
  - abstrct 6y ago
    I'll preface the following by saying I fundamentally disagreed with rolling back the DAO as the entire purpose of these networks is immutability and their trustless nature. The reasons for it, even on their own, all make a lot of sense: - Ethereum has always wanted to move to Proof of Stake, a move that would have been impossible if 25% of the networks funds were suddenly in the hands of a nefarious actor. - The DAO was intended to seed development into projects that would benefit ethereum and the blockchain space as a whole. It was an incredible amount of capital that was all intended to help evolve the network. Losing all this capital and momentum would have been detrimental to that goal. - The DAO was arguably an unlicensed security and losing the funds of that many investors would have been a problem for many who had a hand in building it. By returning investments, they basically made this a non-issue. So again, do I agree with the choice? Absolutely not, you should not proclaim "code is law!" until it's inconvenient for you. Did they have a choice? No, the roll-back was inevitable as soon as the DAO contract was deployed.
  - blurpesec 6y ago
    Some rebuttal: 1) There wasn't a rollback of the blockchain - the method to fix this was an irregular state change (I.e - at block z, change balance at address x to address y). This was only possible because the nature of the attack left all of the compromised funds locked in place for 30 days. Arguably, if it required a rollback of the blockchain, people probably wouldn't have gone along with it. (Though node operators and miners may still have as evidenced by the bitcoin supply bug and rollback in 2010) 2) The funds in the DAO at the time were roughly 14% of the total supply at the time. This is ~1.5x the amount of ether currently custodied by the largest ether custodians today. 3) The common argument of this event being a slippery slope and that it would lead to frequent recovery of hacked funds has turned out to be false. 4) Since the state change was introduced as a software upgrade, node operators (mining pools & infrastructure providers) all had to opt into the change - which a large majority did. This would indicate that most organizations and individuals were either in favor of this solution or were apathetic to the solution

mam2 6y ago

Bitcoin is useless for any legal activity. change my mind with an actual existing application that's not done by anything else.

drcross 6y ago
Transferring international remittance on a weekend. good enough for you?
- mam2 6y ago
  not bad but omg the fees. who does that except 4 nerds in morroco

627467 6y ago

I don't think its fair to say it's "the only thing", although I'll give it that its the most popular aspect that it's talked about. The truth is excitement and hype around price is the lowest common denominator for people interested in cryptocurrency so naturally it would be the most visible topic. Tech around this is still very... technical, young non-vital, niche. I understand why people worry and even discard the value of price-obsession, but (at least for bitcoin) price of the token (along with other variables that indicate adoption) is crucial for security and growth of the platform. Even Satoshi recognized that hype-cycles would be important for adoption of bitcoin.

xur17 6y ago
> The truth is excitement and hype around price is the lowest common denominator for people interested in cryptocurrency so naturally it would be the most visible topic. Echoing this, I'm involved in several more technical cryptocurrency groups, and there is little reference to the price, even today. Pretty much all of the discussion is around the technology itself, and what it can do.
- ackbar03 6y ago
  What can it do exactly though? A lot of talk about decentralization and distributed database and Yada Yada Yada. I'd love to find a good use case for blockchain but so far it's elusive
  - xur17 6y ago
    Cash on the internet. Basically, the ability to send money to someone else without any intermediary, in the same way that you can hand cash to someone else when selling something on craigslist, etc. This is particularly helpful in cases like gift cards where fraud is a problem, and margins are thin, and industries that are blocked by other payment processors [0]. We can argue about whether or not all of the opportunities are a good thing for society or not, but crypto does solve a problem for them. [0] https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/14/business/mastercard-visa-discover-pornhub/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/14/business/mastercard-visa-disc...

tboyd47 6y ago

If you're looking for more substantive discussion among Bitcoiners, touching on its relation to economics, politics, and society, YouTube and Reddit are not the spots. I'd try Twitter. Start with @saifedean and go from there.

elefanten 6y ago
A cursory glance at his feed did not instill confidence. Seemed like a pop business huckster.
- cocktailpeanuts 6y ago
  Yes because he is. These are the people who are spearheading this whole environment being criticized in this thread.
h1bthrowaway 6y ago
Substantive discussion on twitter?
Taek 6y ago
Twitter is an odd suggestion. I think the highest signal-to-noise ratio is probably podcasts. I'd start with 'On the Brink' and 'Uncommon Core'.
- tboyd47 6y ago
  Thanks for the suggestions. I was mainly recommending Twitter as a jumping off point.

flyGuyOnTheSly 6y ago

>It's kinda sad that the pricing or market capitalization is the only thing that is being talked about in the "cryptocurrency community", instead of focussing on how the technology can be useful for society. The serious crypto currency developers out there who are working on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Stellar, and a few others are definitely focused on how the technology can be useful for society and they have been so for years. That's why their prices are going up (over time, not today specifically)... because a lot of people with a lot of money see the potential value of holding them. But yes in general 99% of the "community" you see in crypto related social media spheres only cares about price and profit, I would agree with that statement.

bitobserver 6y ago

I get the impression that 99% of those invested in crypto just want their investment to perform well, and could care less about any project specifics.

HenryKissinger 6y ago
Right. I couldn't care less if my stock transactions are processed by a computer algorithm, a group of cybernetically enhanced punk goblins in a vault below the Stock Exchange building, or intergalactic aliens. As long as it's processed.

capnorange 6y ago

The higher the price, the more useful Bitcoin is.

nostrademons 6y ago

I think this is representative of a bigger problem within the developed world: the top problem on many people's mind is "Other people have money and I don't." This manifests in a lot of other areas as well: stock market speculation, people asking for government handouts, folks looking for get-rich-quick startup ideas, glorification of the "side hustle", etc. And I think the root cause of that is that productivity growth in areas needed for basic survival - housing, health care, not getting screwed (legal) - hasn't grown nearly as fast as productivity in consumer goods. Combined with population growth and the entry of the developing world into the developed world, it means that more people are increasingly chasing the same limited pool of houses and doctors, and basically all disposable income goes to them. The focus on get-rich-quick schemes is a rational reaction to being stuck in a game of musical chairs where there are not enough chairs to go around.

cryptica 6y ago
Yes it's musical chairs; through monetary policy, reserve banks keep pulling out chairs and thus inflating the value of remaining chairs... Then they'll claim that this is all to prevent global warming. All this is actually starting to make me doubt global warming. The banks certainly never gave a damn about global warming before. Do I think that people in power suddenly became more altruistic over the past few years? No, from my experience, they became much more selfish! The whole timing with Greta Thunberg media hype followed by COVID19 then multi-trillion dollar bailouts followed by talks of 'green new deals' and the great reset (which is actually just a continuation of existing policies; not a reset by any definition of the word) is starting to all look a bit too convenient. I've seen first hand how money can corrupt everything. So I'm wondering if it is the science which is attracting the money or the money which is attracting the 'science'. All the climate models are oversimplified and phony; it's pseudoscience... They have tens of thousands of different models and each year they cherry-pick the ones which guessed correctly... Then they keep switching to newer models which keeps proving them right claiming that they did so to keep up with technology (of course not because they were running out of correct old models to cherry pick from)... It's a joke.
- SCUSKU 6y ago

jdhn 6y ago

/r/bitcoin is basically one giant pump and dump subreddit. Every now and then there are helpful threads that talk about actual progress being made in terms of the Bitcoin protocol/protocols that live on top of it (Lightning), but they're never really upvoted that much and don't spark a lot of conversation. That being said, I think that major Bitcoin forums like /r/bitcoin serve a good purpose because it acts as a containment board for people who just want to talk about the price.

filipmix 6y ago

> It's kinda sad that the pricing or market capitalization is the only thing that is being talked about in the "cryptocurrency community" Clearly price is a big topic of conversation. Nothing wrong with that. But you are very incorrect if you believe that is the only topic of conversation. Perhaps using /r/Bitcoin is not a valid sample size. In my day job, I'm neck deep in blockchain and cryptocurrency use cases - and there are conferences, webinars, real-world enterprise adoption, etc.

Daishiman 6y ago
Can you cite those use cases?
- Taek 6y ago
  We're using blockchain technology to build a decentralized cloud where users can store data on remote hosts without having to trust them, and without giving up ownership of the data. The blockchain is a critical part of the infrastructure because the hosts need to be paid for the services they provide, but as untrusted entities we need assurances from them. Also, if you don't have a blockchain in the middle you need something like PayPal in the middle, which is a single point of failure.

Lammy 6y ago

> how the technology can be useful for society I think it's important to separate Bitcoin itself from the general concept of blockchains as a new type of data structure. Personally I think the real benefits to society will be had by applying Bitcoin's concepts to brand new unrelated things, and hopefully Bitcoin mindshare can help spark that creativity in people. To me, someone saying "The Blockchain" is like someone saying "The Linked-List". They're not thinking about it generically yet.

Taek 6y ago
A blockchain is a lot more than just a data structure, it's an entire governance system that needs a community around it and active maintenance, continually running nodes, etc. It is more like a discord server than it is like a data structure.

NoOneNew 6y ago

While I do agree that crypto needs to step away from the current "investment vehicle" mentality and be treated more like a "currency"... I'm still lost how yet another currency is going to help society. Im not trying to be an ass, I'm being serious on figuring this out. I constantly see this argument with no real logic other than trying to essentially use Marxist ideals of "redistribution of wealth" to a disenfranchised demographic. Yet trying to distribute a computer based/useful currency to folks that dont have running water let alone electricity also confuses me. Tag on that the current distribution of bitcoin is in the realm of 30% of users own some 90% of bitcoin wealth. That's a pretty shitty interpretation of redistribution of wealth. In truth, it pretty much follows the realized implementation of Marxism throughout history, "everyone needs to redistribute wealth to me and my friends and away from the people who already have it". Just saying "this will help the poor because they have nothing" over and over with no real plan, let alone action, doesn't make it true. One guy I argued with once told me about him donating his bitcoins to buy pizzas for people who needed it. Which, cool. That's awesome. But the donation argument makes it sound like people dont donate dollars or euros. Or even like theres some grand mechanism that makes bitcoin better than traditional currencies... even though crypto gets converted to traditional currency so it can become useful.

pdpi 6y ago
> Just saying "this will help the poor because they have nothing" over and over with no real plan, let alone action, doesn't make it true. I used to work at a bitcoin company, and we had large user communities in countries where the local currency was subject to very high inflation, and access to stabler currencies (like dollars or euros) was severely limited. We were actually helping proper deal with real problems, and we were proud of it. Then the investment-tool-for-rich-white-kids mentality took over. :(
- NoOneNew 6y ago
  Okay... how does bitcoin differ from an unstable traditional currency? Both are subject to high and low swings to inflation and deflation. The one thing bitcoin has not been in its history is stable. This still ends up to being the equivalent to "there are 14 standards, let's make a standard to unify them... there are now 15 standards". Plus, all you described was a currency exchange with an extra step. You could replace bitcoin with rice commodity, wheat futures or Tesla stock and achieve the exact same thing. Again, "redistribute to my pocket" with extra steps. Look, I'm not trying to be a dick, but bitcoin was sold on the lie that it helps poor people. You're not wrong for wanting to help poor people. But people need to come to the realization that bitcoin has been Theranos-like the whole time. It's a waste of time if you're goal is to help the poor.

Siira 6y ago

Bitcoin can’t technically handle casual use. Perhaps the new ethereum will achieve that. The price is the only changing thing about Bitcoin.

josh_carterPDX 6y ago

I think this is an important point. So many people compare bitcoin to a regular stock. While there are ways you can compare the two, there aren't as many use cases for stocks as there are with bitcoin. If people would focus on that we could really change the way the underbanked access capital. It could be the thing that tips the scale to build equitable access to capital.

koonsolo 6y ago

Nano solved this on reddit by splitting off a nano_trading. That way the main channel is free of all the price bullshit.

woah 6y ago

You need to make a distinction between Bitcoin and other cryptos. For the past 6-7 years, bitcoin has defined itself as being a “store of value”, rather than doing anything technically new. With this being the only goal, nothing matters except for the price. Other cryptos such as Ethereum, Cosmos, and Ava have more of a technical focus.

Mc_Big_G 6y ago

Nobody talks about anything but price and manipulation in gold bug forums. Bitcoin in digital gold, not digital money.

CryptoPunk 6y ago

Up until 2015, price talk was heavily discouraged in /r/Bitcoin. It was all about adoption - new merchants accepting it, new people spending it, new use-cases enabled by its peer-to-peer electronic cash and immutable and permissionless record-keeping functionality, etc. Everything changed after the 'purge', where the head moderator took a harsh stance against members trying to build consensus for a hard fork that would help realize Bitcoin's potential as a global peer-to-peer electronic cash, and started banning people left and right. The Bitcoin subreddit turned into a full time price pumping forum after that. Ironically, Bitcoin saw more rapid price growth before 2015, when the primary topic of discussion was consciously steered away from price, than after.