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I completely fail to understand the antipathy towards bitcoin.

by pnathan 15y ago

edw 15y ago
Bitcoin = (Ron Paul + Peak Oil) * Sarah Palin ^ Glenn Beck
- evo_9 15y ago
  Really how do you come to that conclusion? Bitcoin seems like a legitimate attempt to move currency into the future absent of any one entity controlling it. Edit: I'm not being snarky, I haven't followed this that closely and wondered if there was/is a political component to Bitcoin that connects those dots.
  - kylemaxwell 15y ago
    From my perspective, the issues around why Bitcoin is made of fail have been done to death here, including in several stories specifically about that.
- burgerbrain 15y ago
  I love how every topic, no matter how initially obscure, is eventually boiled down to boring old (american politics) partisan flames.
  - edw 15y ago
    It's more a reference to the unstoppable memes on Digg and Reddit that become all-consuming obsessions for a small part of the public and irritants to everyone else. That these hobby horses happen to involve American politics is really just a coincidence.
    - burgerbrain 15y ago
      Well for the love of sanity, don't bring it here.
      - ubernostrum 15y ago
        Too late. We have met the fanboys, and they are ours.
- silentbicycle 15y ago
  That's even better than my previous favorite, from "Unmaintainable Code: Naming" (http://mindprod.com/jgloss/unmainnaming.html http://mindprod.com/jgloss/unmainnaming.html): marypoppins = ( superman + starship ) / god;
- noduerme 15y ago
  +1, best post this week ;)
tzs 15y ago
As far as the technology goes, it has some interesting aspects--sufficient to justify a couple stories. Economically, there's enough in it to justify another story or two. The rest seems to be driven by speculators, and possibly borders on something like a pump and dump scheme to drive the price up so the speculators can make more money, at the expense of the later participants who fall for the hype.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
- bonch 15y ago
  > People that don't have the money to buy bitcoins and see them appreciate are jealous of the ones that do. They hide their insufficiency and jealousy by calling it a ponzi scheme or scam, so they can simultaneously feel superior to the bitcoiners whilst tricking themselves into thinking they wouldn't buy them anyway even if they had the money. What a goofy, insecure reaction. > It is as revolutionary to money (the concept, perhaps not the implementation as yet) as mp3 was to music, or blogs to writers. The difference between concept and implementation is also the difference between fantasy and reality.
  - bonch 15y ago
    adrianwaj deleted his insane comment, which was this: "People that don't have the money to buy bitcoins and see them appreciate are jealous of the ones that do. They hide their insufficiency and jealousy by calling it a ponzi scheme or scam, so they can simultaneously feel superior to the bitcoiners whilst tricking themselves into thinking they wouldn't buy them anyway even if they had the money. It'd also be a fear that one day they'd have to work on a bitcoin project, which would be rubbing salt in the wounds. Fact is, there are tons of hackers that could contribute a lot to the bitcoin ecosystem, but they take the negative route instead: they don't want to give anyone a free ride (or they like their rut.) I could go on, but there are some anti-Israel type tones in the anti-bitcoin brigade, that's my feeling when I write anything positive about bitcoin: I may as well write something positive about Israel. For many, bitcoin.org is the startup, and buying the currency is the investment. People would upvote any story about their startup, and they'd upvote anything about bitcoin. It's a fair thing to do. Bitcoin is an extremely hacker-ish thing. It is a hack on the money supply. It is as revolutionary to money (the concept, perhaps not the implementation as yet) as mp3 was to music, or blogs to writers. It has hugely positive implications, so people that hate it, will Really hate it."
etherael 15y ago
Shallow thinking. We reside in a world controlled by a collection of political forces. Money is the primary lever by which pressure is exerted in order to execute political policy. I am not an enormous Ayn Rand fan, however there were a few parts of Atlas Shrugged I really did find very eye opening. The effete playboy of the series had a good one that I'll briefly include here to outline the importance of the core issue as it relates to the subtle strings of force in our political existence; "So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Aconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil? I still find the use of terms like moochers and looters loaded, but the core point is extremely potent. Money is the primary friendly lever in modern society, it is the primary incentive for production. For this reason alone, the ways in which bitcoin can upset the apple cart should be thoroughly considered and not simply discarded offhand. People objecting to bitcoin are making a cursory glance at it and it hits one of their suspicion triggers and they instantly discard it; Enriches early adopters? Aha, must be a ponzi scheme, no need to dig deeper here. There are far more interesting objections that are actually bounded in the fabric of what is real rather than a cursory glance and misunderstanding of what is seen. What about an execution of the age old idea of assassination politics with bitcoin as the medium of exchange? If you really want to fearmonger, think hard about what might actually happen when the primary lever of society is completely immune to government. This is both frightening in some ways and exhilerating in others. How about superfluid buying and selling agencies run by speculators that contract to traders exchanging local fiat currencies for bitcoins on the wire and instantly back to local fiat for the receiver at the end, reducing exposure for the merchant and buyer and abstraction from the messy cryptographic details of the implementation and enabling the speculators, as well as providing hefty profits for the administrators of such agents, in turn incentivising an enormous bazaar of such agents to exist in a huge snowball effect that makes regulation even more of a distant, ridiculous idea. Think about it, really, really hard. This has already changed the world, the only question now is how will the chips fall. It is exactly appropriate that it should get a lot of attention here.
ubernostrum 15y ago
Three reasons, for me: First is (subjective) oversaturation. It's like the days when there's some announcement or scandal involving Apple, and you know that for the next little while this is all you're going to see. After a while it's just "oh, another Bitcoin story?" Second is that it seems to turn off the rational-thinking centers of many brains. You end up with lots and lots of threads full of people who either A) once read a Neal Stephenson novel and now are convinced this is the Crypt (it's not) and the Black Chamber dudes are coming any minute (they aren't) or B) are being hit hard by the Dunning-Kruger effect and think they know more about economics or world politics than they actually do. Third is that, well, it's pretty boring. OK, you made an alternative currency. This is not new. The specific selection of buzzwords around this alternate currency is new, but that in itself isn't really something that gets me excited, and in fact I think that's more of a turnoff, if only because my experience has been that the more buzzwords you pile on (decentralized peer-to-peer non-fiat non-inflationary alternative currency with hard crypto anonymization!), the less likely you are to actually have an interesting product. (and fourth is that sooner or later somebody's probably going to blow it wide open, security-wise, but that's neither here nor there)

I completely fail to understand the antipathy towards bitcoin.

by pnathan 15y ago

I completely fail to understand the antipathy towards bitcoin.

edw 15y ago

Bitcoin = (Ron Paul + Peak Oil) * Sarah Palin ^ Glenn Beck

evo_9 15y ago
Really how do you come to that conclusion? Bitcoin seems like a legitimate attempt to move currency into the future absent of any one entity controlling it. Edit: I'm not being snarky, I haven't followed this that closely and wondered if there was/is a political component to Bitcoin that connects those dots.
- kylemaxwell 15y ago
  From my perspective, the issues around why Bitcoin is made of fail have been done to death here, including in several stories specifically about that.
burgerbrain 15y ago
I love how every topic, no matter how initially obscure, is eventually boiled down to boring old (american politics) partisan flames.
- edw 15y ago
  It's more a reference to the unstoppable memes on Digg and Reddit that become all-consuming obsessions for a small part of the public and irritants to everyone else. That these hobby horses happen to involve American politics is really just a coincidence.
  - burgerbrain 15y ago
    Well for the love of sanity, don't bring it here.
    - ubernostrum 15y ago
      Too late. We have met the fanboys, and they are ours.
silentbicycle 15y ago
That's even better than my previous favorite, from "Unmaintainable Code: Naming" (http://mindprod.com/jgloss/unmainnaming.html http://mindprod.com/jgloss/unmainnaming.html): marypoppins = ( superman + starship ) / god;
noduerme 15y ago
+1, best post this week ;)

tzs 15y ago

As far as the technology goes, it has some interesting aspects--sufficient to justify a couple stories. Economically, there's enough in it to justify another story or two. The rest seems to be driven by speculators, and possibly borders on something like a pump and dump scheme to drive the price up so the speculators can make more money, at the expense of the later participants who fall for the hype.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

bonch 15y ago
> People that don't have the money to buy bitcoins and see them appreciate are jealous of the ones that do. They hide their insufficiency and jealousy by calling it a ponzi scheme or scam, so they can simultaneously feel superior to the bitcoiners whilst tricking themselves into thinking they wouldn't buy them anyway even if they had the money. What a goofy, insecure reaction. > It is as revolutionary to money (the concept, perhaps not the implementation as yet) as mp3 was to music, or blogs to writers. The difference between concept and implementation is also the difference between fantasy and reality.
- bonch 15y ago
  adrianwaj deleted his insane comment, which was this: "People that don't have the money to buy bitcoins and see them appreciate are jealous of the ones that do. They hide their insufficiency and jealousy by calling it a ponzi scheme or scam, so they can simultaneously feel superior to the bitcoiners whilst tricking themselves into thinking they wouldn't buy them anyway even if they had the money. It'd also be a fear that one day they'd have to work on a bitcoin project, which would be rubbing salt in the wounds. Fact is, there are tons of hackers that could contribute a lot to the bitcoin ecosystem, but they take the negative route instead: they don't want to give anyone a free ride (or they like their rut.) I could go on, but there are some anti-Israel type tones in the anti-bitcoin brigade, that's my feeling when I write anything positive about bitcoin: I may as well write something positive about Israel. For many, bitcoin.org is the startup, and buying the currency is the investment. People would upvote any story about their startup, and they'd upvote anything about bitcoin. It's a fair thing to do. Bitcoin is an extremely hacker-ish thing. It is a hack on the money supply. It is as revolutionary to money (the concept, perhaps not the implementation as yet) as mp3 was to music, or blogs to writers. It has hugely positive implications, so people that hate it, will Really hate it."

etherael 15y ago

Shallow thinking. We reside in a world controlled by a collection of political forces. Money is the primary lever by which pressure is exerted in order to execute political policy. I am not an enormous Ayn Rand fan, however there were a few parts of Atlas Shrugged I really did find very eye opening. The effete playboy of the series had a good one that I'll briefly include here to outline the importance of the core issue as it relates to the subtle strings of force in our political existence; "So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Aconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil? I still find the use of terms like moochers and looters loaded, but the core point is extremely potent. Money is the primary friendly lever in modern society, it is the primary incentive for production. For this reason alone, the ways in which bitcoin can upset the apple cart should be thoroughly considered and not simply discarded offhand. People objecting to bitcoin are making a cursory glance at it and it hits one of their suspicion triggers and they instantly discard it; Enriches early adopters? Aha, must be a ponzi scheme, no need to dig deeper here. There are far more interesting objections that are actually bounded in the fabric of what is real rather than a cursory glance and misunderstanding of what is seen. What about an execution of the age old idea of assassination politics with bitcoin as the medium of exchange? If you really want to fearmonger, think hard about what might actually happen when the primary lever of society is completely immune to government. This is both frightening in some ways and exhilerating in others. How about superfluid buying and selling agencies run by speculators that contract to traders exchanging local fiat currencies for bitcoins on the wire and instantly back to local fiat for the receiver at the end, reducing exposure for the merchant and buyer and abstraction from the messy cryptographic details of the implementation and enabling the speculators, as well as providing hefty profits for the administrators of such agents, in turn incentivising an enormous bazaar of such agents to exist in a huge snowball effect that makes regulation even more of a distant, ridiculous idea. Think about it, really, really hard. This has already changed the world, the only question now is how will the chips fall. It is exactly appropriate that it should get a lot of attention here.

ubernostrum 15y ago

Three reasons, for me: First is (subjective) oversaturation. It's like the days when there's some announcement or scandal involving Apple, and you know that for the next little while this is all you're going to see. After a while it's just "oh, another Bitcoin story?" Second is that it seems to turn off the rational-thinking centers of many brains. You end up with lots and lots of threads full of people who either A) once read a Neal Stephenson novel and now are convinced this is the Crypt (it's not) and the Black Chamber dudes are coming any minute (they aren't) or B) are being hit hard by the Dunning-Kruger effect and think they know more about economics or world politics than they actually do. Third is that, well, it's pretty boring. OK, you made an alternative currency. This is not new. The specific selection of buzzwords around this alternate currency is new, but that in itself isn't really something that gets me excited, and in fact I think that's more of a turnoff, if only because my experience has been that the more buzzwords you pile on (decentralized peer-to-peer non-fiat non-inflationary alternative currency with hard crypto anonymization!), the less likely you are to actually have an interesting product. (and fourth is that sooner or later somebody's probably going to blow it wide open, security-wise, but that's neither here nor there)