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This guy completely misses the point. The excitement over Bitcoin is due part to the fact that it operates over a decentralized P2P network that exists independ

This guy completely misses the point. The excitement over Bitcoin is due part to the fact that it operates over a decentralized P2P network that exists independently from the creators. Perhaps if one of the earlier forms of digital currency had been as altruistic in their engineering they would have seen as much enthusiasm from the public. In other words, nobody is going to get excited about propping up the next big evil empire like PayPal. Bitcoin puts the powers of paying and being paid right where it belongs; directly with the people.

hugh3 15y ago
Perhaps if one of the earlier forms of digital currency had been as altruistic in their engineering they would have seen as much enthusiasm from the public. Really? It was an altruistic project? The creators of bitcoin aren't sitting on stashes of bitcoins in the (forlorn) hope that if bitcoins ever actually take off they'll be insanely wealthy?
- adrianwaj 15y ago
  I wonder if there's a way to track the date bitcoins were mined - make those less valuable... or something like that.. you have a fair point.
- jakehow 15y ago
  Original paper is here if you want to judge motivations: http://www.bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf http://www.bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf At the current value, they are already rich and probably not forlorn.
  - jerf 15y ago
    It is important to remember exchange rates are not static. The exchange rate is determined by the supply and demand of the two currencies for exchange. If you suddenly liquidate a lot of BitCoins all at once, you will raise the supply on the BitCoin side and thus drop the BitCoin-to-dollar exchange rate. It is not valid to take the exchange rate, multiply by the number of extant BitCoins, and declare that to be the size of the BitCoin economy in dollars; that will grossly overestimate it. (This has nothing to do with BitCoin qua BitCoin, it's the nature of currency exchange. Because most currencies that people deal with have such enormous economic bases, people tend to reason about them such that they neglect certain terms that they don't have to worry about in practice because of sheer size. If I exchange $100 to Euros, I won't personally budge the exchange rate noticeably. But in a much smaller economy, you can't neglect such things.)
gritzko 15y ago
http://www.pds.ewi.tudelft.nl/~victor/bitcoin.html http://www.pds.ewi.tudelft.nl/~victor/bitcoin.html Canned response: Bitcoin is only "peer-to-peer" in the sense of the British Peerage system. Early-comer-wins, that's the only advantage I see (for early comers). Bitcoin does not capitalize trust in people and institutions (like regular modern money system does, by the way). It is just a silly pyramid scheme reselling air, fed by hopes of those higher in the pyramid to sell Bitcoins to those lower.

hugh3 15y ago

Perhaps if one of the earlier forms of digital currency had been as altruistic in their engineering they would have seen as much enthusiasm from the public. Really? It was an altruistic project? The creators of bitcoin aren't sitting on stashes of bitcoins in the (forlorn) hope that if bitcoins ever actually take off they'll be insanely wealthy?

adrianwaj 15y ago
I wonder if there's a way to track the date bitcoins were mined - make those less valuable... or something like that.. you have a fair point.
jakehow 15y ago
Original paper is here if you want to judge motivations: http://www.bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf http://www.bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf At the current value, they are already rich and probably not forlorn.
- jerf 15y ago
  It is important to remember exchange rates are not static. The exchange rate is determined by the supply and demand of the two currencies for exchange. If you suddenly liquidate a lot of BitCoins all at once, you will raise the supply on the BitCoin side and thus drop the BitCoin-to-dollar exchange rate. It is not valid to take the exchange rate, multiply by the number of extant BitCoins, and declare that to be the size of the BitCoin economy in dollars; that will grossly overestimate it. (This has nothing to do with BitCoin qua BitCoin, it's the nature of currency exchange. Because most currencies that people deal with have such enormous economic bases, people tend to reason about them such that they neglect certain terms that they don't have to worry about in practice because of sheer size. If I exchange $100 to Euros, I won't personally budge the exchange rate noticeably. But in a much smaller economy, you can't neglect such things.)

gritzko 15y ago

http://www.pds.ewi.tudelft.nl/~victor/bitcoin.html http://www.pds.ewi.tudelft.nl/~victor/bitcoin.html Canned response: Bitcoin is only "peer-to-peer" in the sense of the British Peerage system. Early-comer-wins, that's the only advantage I see (for early comers). Bitcoin does not capitalize trust in people and institutions (like regular modern money system does, by the way). It is just a silly pyramid scheme reselling air, fed by hopes of those higher in the pyramid to sell Bitcoins to those lower.