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More like digital gold. Calling it a currency is really not an apt description.

by eloff 6y ago

minitoar 6y ago
Unfortunate they called it a 'coin' then. Maybe it should've been Bitgold. Digimetal.
- thinkmassive 6y ago
  The name Bit Gold was already recently used for a similar project by Nick Szabo when Bitcoin was announced: https://nakamotoinstitute.org/bit-gold/ https://nakamotoinstitute.org/bit-gold/ Contrary to what many people who only recently discovered Bitcoin probably believe, it was not created in a vacuum as some Ponzi scheme. Instead it was a concept that had been iterated on for decades until Satoshi discovered the right combination of cryptographic technologies and economic incentives to make a so-far-unstoppable decentralized digital currency.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    Well, Satoshi was more than likely Paul Calder Le Roux who wanted a way to launder the proceeds of his crime network. > Instead it was a concept that had been iterated on for decades until Satoshi discovered the right combination of cryptographic technologies and economic incentives to make a so-far-unstoppable decentralized digital currency. You know how that sounds right? Like religion, not clear-headed thinking.
    - thinkmassive 6y ago
      I expect Bitcoin to affect monetary systems in a way similar to how FOSS changed software. My opinion is neither of those is a religion. The development of Bitcoin in particular sounds more like following the scientific method to me, but you're entitled to your own interpretation.
kylebenzle 6y ago
It says in the title of the paper, Digital CASH. But, ever since Blockstream (Adam Back and Greg Maxwell) hijacked the GitHub repo years ago Bitcoin (BTC) has purposefully failed at this central use case. However, the project and White Paper live on in projects like Monero, Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum.
cubano 6y ago
BTC has already been legally ruled as property, not currency, I believe if I read the ruling correctly. Not digital gold, but pharmaceutical grade gold as Saylor put it in a recent Odd Lots pod, and it's hard to argue that...also quoted from the same pod..[not a perfect transcript] "...so that took us to cryptos and we looked at 6500 cryptos and we found that BTC is the dominant network. its 25x bigger than the next closest thing that looks like it, and has more than $200bil monetary energy in it. it is basically Facebook or Google for money. and this is the nuance that most people haven't realized yet..what you have is a dominant digital network that has been engineered to host a safe haven treasury reserve asset superior to gold in all respects. it's pharmaceutical grade gold [love this line]. if God [blurb] gold as a treasury reserve asset to hold for 100 years, he would create 21mil gold coins, he'd make it impossible to make any more, he would make it possible to audit it from anywhere on earth from any node every 10 minutes, make it unhackable and make it an open architecture where you could build it into an iphone or into Square or paypal or any other exchange without permission, and he would distribute it everywhere on earth with these crypto SHA256 miners so hat no company controls it, no CEO controls it, no country controls it, and no regulators control it..."[0] [0] https://play.acast.com/s/oddlots/6b8b72d0-455c-11eb-b9ed-377604512ee6 https://play.acast.com/s/oddlots/6b8b72d0-455c-11eb-b9ed-377...
- ordinaryradical 6y ago
  But given the dynamics of PoW mining, isn't bitcoin defacto controlled by a handful of Chinese mining cartels, which are themselves controlled by the CCP? I feel like this whole pitch makes sense until you get to that part.
  - cubano 6y ago
    So in a way...who cares who mines it? Do you care who owns your real estate before you buy it? Or who mines your gold before you wear it? Probably not. Yes I suppose there is some political aspect to that side of it, but the crypto itself...it's about as apolitical as it gets.
    - qw3rty01 6y ago
squeaky-clean 6y ago
The first sentence of the bitcoin whitepaper is literally "A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution."
- chillacy 6y ago
  I think it's safe to say that the BTC community has pivoted to a more fitting use case for their technology. The Bitcoin Cash fork and Litecoin made scaling choices that make it better for payments.
- EpicEng 6y ago
  And if they said it were a unicorn, would that make it true? It's not a currency because you can't use it as a currency.
- eloff 6y ago
  It doesn't matter what it was marketed as. It matters what it is. But they made it deflationary and a good currency needs to be inflationary otherwise you just hold onto it instead of spending it. Which had made it more like a digital gold. It has totally failed as a system for payments for this and other reasons. It is also too slow and too expensive per transaction.

More like digital gold. Calling it a currency is really not an apt description.

by eloff 6y ago

More like digital gold. Calling it a currency is really not an apt description.

minitoar 6y ago

Unfortunate they called it a 'coin' then. Maybe it should've been Bitgold. Digimetal.

thinkmassive 6y ago
The name Bit Gold was already recently used for a similar project by Nick Szabo when Bitcoin was announced: https://nakamotoinstitute.org/bit-gold/ https://nakamotoinstitute.org/bit-gold/ Contrary to what many people who only recently discovered Bitcoin probably believe, it was not created in a vacuum as some Ponzi scheme. Instead it was a concept that had been iterated on for decades until Satoshi discovered the right combination of cryptographic technologies and economic incentives to make a so-far-unstoppable decentralized digital currency.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  Well, Satoshi was more than likely Paul Calder Le Roux who wanted a way to launder the proceeds of his crime network. > Instead it was a concept that had been iterated on for decades until Satoshi discovered the right combination of cryptographic technologies and economic incentives to make a so-far-unstoppable decentralized digital currency. You know how that sounds right? Like religion, not clear-headed thinking.
  - thinkmassive 6y ago
    I expect Bitcoin to affect monetary systems in a way similar to how FOSS changed software. My opinion is neither of those is a religion. The development of Bitcoin in particular sounds more like following the scientific method to me, but you're entitled to your own interpretation.

kylebenzle 6y ago

It says in the title of the paper, Digital CASH. But, ever since Blockstream (Adam Back and Greg Maxwell) hijacked the GitHub repo years ago Bitcoin (BTC) has purposefully failed at this central use case. However, the project and White Paper live on in projects like Monero, Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum.

cubano 6y ago

BTC has already been legally ruled as property, not currency, I believe if I read the ruling correctly. Not digital gold, but pharmaceutical grade gold as Saylor put it in a recent Odd Lots pod, and it's hard to argue that...also quoted from the same pod..[not a perfect transcript] "...so that took us to cryptos and we looked at 6500 cryptos and we found that BTC is the dominant network. its 25x bigger than the next closest thing that looks like it, and has more than $200bil monetary energy in it. it is basically Facebook or Google for money. and this is the nuance that most people haven't realized yet..what you have is a dominant digital network that has been engineered to host a safe haven treasury reserve asset superior to gold in all respects. it's pharmaceutical grade gold [love this line]. if God [blurb] gold as a treasury reserve asset to hold for 100 years, he would create 21mil gold coins, he'd make it impossible to make any more, he would make it possible to audit it from anywhere on earth from any node every 10 minutes, make it unhackable and make it an open architecture where you could build it into an iphone or into Square or paypal or any other exchange without permission, and he would distribute it everywhere on earth with these crypto SHA256 miners so hat no company controls it, no CEO controls it, no country controls it, and no regulators control it..."[0] [0] https://play.acast.com/s/oddlots/6b8b72d0-455c-11eb-b9ed-377604512ee6 https://play.acast.com/s/oddlots/6b8b72d0-455c-11eb-b9ed-377...

ordinaryradical 6y ago
But given the dynamics of PoW mining, isn't bitcoin defacto controlled by a handful of Chinese mining cartels, which are themselves controlled by the CCP? I feel like this whole pitch makes sense until you get to that part.
- cubano 6y ago
  So in a way...who cares who mines it? Do you care who owns your real estate before you buy it? Or who mines your gold before you wear it? Probably not. Yes I suppose there is some political aspect to that side of it, but the crypto itself...it's about as apolitical as it gets.
  - qw3rty01 6y ago

squeaky-clean 6y ago

The first sentence of the bitcoin whitepaper is literally "A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution."

chillacy 6y ago
I think it's safe to say that the BTC community has pivoted to a more fitting use case for their technology. The Bitcoin Cash fork and Litecoin made scaling choices that make it better for payments.
EpicEng 6y ago
And if they said it were a unicorn, would that make it true? It's not a currency because you can't use it as a currency.
eloff 6y ago
It doesn't matter what it was marketed as. It matters what it is. But they made it deflationary and a good currency needs to be inflationary otherwise you just hold onto it instead of spending it. Which had made it more like a digital gold. It has totally failed as a system for payments for this and other reasons. It is also too slow and too expensive per transaction.