6 ms·

Accidentally because opposition to bitcoin, like opposition to cars, isn't luddite rustic anti-industrialism, it's common sense advocacy for equally modern but

Accidentally because opposition to bitcoin, like opposition to cars, isn't luddite rustic anti-industrialism, it's common sense advocacy for equally modern but different solutions to the problem. Bitcoin doesn't do anything that electronic banking can't do better, and it causes a lot of harm in wasted energy and space. Cars don't do anything that busses, trains, and bicycles can't do better, and they cause a lot of harm in wasted energy and space.

SamPatt 6y ago
Bitcoin exists because electronic banking requires trust in centralized financial institutions. When you see the entire stock market move because the Fed chairperson makes an offhand comment about when they'll start or stop doing xyz policy, you realize having such a highly centralized system is dangerous.
- hannasanarion 6y ago
  Dude... the stock market is not the same thing as the banking system. How your investment porfolio reacts to a change in monetary policy has nothing whatsoever to do with the utility of your checking account. Trust in centralized financial institutions is not a problem. In fact it's is the opposite of a problem, it's an enormous benefit. Centralized financial institutions with government backing ensure the availability and safety of deposited funds. Nobody has ever had their bank account drained in the US since the introduction of FDIC in 1933. In the last 10 years alone, over a billion dollars in bitcoin has been stolen out of people's wallets by hacked exchanges and smart contract exploits, money that can never be returned because blockchain is irreversible by design. Does that really sound trustworthy to you?
  - npongratz 6y ago
    > Nobody has ever had their bank account drained in the US since the introduction of FDIC in 1933. Plenty of people have had their bank accounts drained when they fell victim to "identification theft." That is quite a crafty euphemism -- banks fail to create secure systems, attackers steal funds from victims' bank accounts, and instead of owning up to their failure, banks blame the victims of the thefts by saying the victims' "identities" were "stolen." I'll give the banks some credit, however: they'll prop up a seemingly empathetic customer service representative who will repeatedly say how "sorry" they are on behalf of their employer. If the victim is persistent enough, the customer service rep will eventually promise to initiate a lengthy investigation, after which the bank will perhaps reinstate the funds that were stolen from their system. Do they fix their broken, insecure system? Of course not. But at least the victim isn't clogging the customer service lines any more.
    - hannasanarion 6y ago
      Identity theft is reversible. It has happened to me, somebody got a hold of my checking account details and drained the account of about $10,000. I called the bank, they reversed the transaction and gave me all my funds back right away, and it was over, just like that, no questions asked. What happens if your bitcoin details get stolen, hm? What happens when somebody drains your bitcoin wallet? Who can you complain to to get your cryptographically secure irrevocably transferred money back?
      - npongratz 6y ago
        That's simply the risk a person takes by having a bitcoin wallet. Seems (at least right now) there are plenty of people who want the benefit of a permissionless value transfer system and are willing to shoulder that risk. Hopefully they secure their magical numbers / private keys better than the banks do, because yes, obviously, there is no Central Bitcoin Governor acting as the Reinstater of Last Resort. Some people are fine with that risk. Others are not. It's totally cool. More than one value transfer system can coexist in the world.
        hannasanarion 6y ago
        What do you mean "better than the banks do"? For one, banks don't have single-point-of-failure account access like blockchain does, and for another, the risks of banks are much lower because credit card and ACH transactions are easily reversible. These are all reasons that banks are more trustworthy and more secure than blockchain, which sees tens of millions of dollars of irreversible theft annually.
  - jyrkesh 6y ago
    You're right in that the stock market and the banking system are not the same thing, but I'd argue that they're intrinsically linked. I move USD from my checking account into my investment accounts in order to buy equities, and I do that more when the Federal Reserve is pumping more liquidity into the market via low interest rates. There are many folks out there using e.g. TSLA as an inflation hedge (which is why it has a P/E > 1000) because they know that USDs will decline in value as liquidity keeps getting pumped. If we're all using a decentralized currency like Bitcoin with a fixed inflation rate, you're going to see a lot more sanity and price stability in the equities markets.
    - tonfa 6y ago
      Was the economy more stable with no monetary policies? Was the gold standard a failure but now we fixed the underlying issues?
- notahacker 6y ago
  > When you see the entire stock market move because the Fed chairperson makes an offhand comment about when they'll start or stop doing xyz policy, you realize having such a highly centralized system is dangerous. Then you see that Bitcoin moves more when Elon tweets...
  - helloworld11 6y ago
    I support the idea of Bitcoin and blockchain despite flaws in both but you beat me to pointing this obviously bad argument against stock markets in defense of Bitcoin. BTC constantly has insane movements over absurd things like Musk tweets and etc.. It's much worse than the stock market at being volatile.
yurielt 6y ago
>Implying electronic banking can do anything about inflation Don’t be so dishonest
- hannasanarion 6y ago
  Want a deflationary monetary policy? Vote for it. Technology isn't going to solve the problem for you. Also, deflationary monetary policy is insane and nobody should want it. Economies grow from continuous re-investment and commerce, not from people stashing away their money and watching its value increase for no reason. edit: also, the fact that bitcoin is deflationary is entirely incidental, that was just Nakamoto's choice. It would have been just as easy to make bitcoin highly inflationary. The only thing that blockchain guarantees is that monetary policy can't ever change, which is also a thing that no sane person would ever want, there are lots of good reasons to modify the rate of inflation/deflation.
  - yurielt 6y ago
    What mainstream candidate in the last two elections had a deflationary monetary policy? ROn Paul was the last candidate with something relatively close to that. That being said the idea that I want a deflationary policy on cash is ridiculous, but I want a deflationary policy on my semiliquid investments. BItcoin does that. >It would have been just as easy to make bitcoin highly inflationary. Yeah but then nobody would have liked it. There is definitively nothing wrong with two different kinds of cash existing in a system, one purely liquid one semiliquid. Again please do not be dishonest. There are very specific reasons that make bitcoing attractive. Acting as if electronic banking deals with what bitcoin is intended to solve, is an extremely dishonest way of framing things.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  Inflation is not a problem so long as you invest your money as soon as you receive it and your wages keep pace with inflation (and they do). In that case the 2% per annum inflation rate only hurts you from the day you get your pay check to the day you invest it productively or spend it on necessities. In fact if you purchase your necessities on a credit card the 0% APR until your bill comes due makes inflation work for you.
Noos 6y ago
...try bringing your cat to the vet on a bicycle in a thunderstorm, or walking fifteen minutes with him in a moderate rain to your bus stop. Try going on a date with someone with no car, or working second or third shift and have to go home in the midnight hours on a train with sketchy as hell people. Try bicycling to work with a decent cold, or having to work a 12 hour shift doing manual labor and then need to bicycle back 30 minutes. Really, there are plenty of use cases for cars. Right now where I live its incredibly cold with biting winds, and bicycling or even walking 20 minutes to a stop and waiting in the cold would be murder.

SamPatt 6y ago

Bitcoin exists because electronic banking requires trust in centralized financial institutions. When you see the entire stock market move because the Fed chairperson makes an offhand comment about when they'll start or stop doing xyz policy, you realize having such a highly centralized system is dangerous.

hannasanarion 6y ago
Dude... the stock market is not the same thing as the banking system. How your investment porfolio reacts to a change in monetary policy has nothing whatsoever to do with the utility of your checking account. Trust in centralized financial institutions is not a problem. In fact it's is the opposite of a problem, it's an enormous benefit. Centralized financial institutions with government backing ensure the availability and safety of deposited funds. Nobody has ever had their bank account drained in the US since the introduction of FDIC in 1933. In the last 10 years alone, over a billion dollars in bitcoin has been stolen out of people's wallets by hacked exchanges and smart contract exploits, money that can never be returned because blockchain is irreversible by design. Does that really sound trustworthy to you?
- npongratz 6y ago
  > Nobody has ever had their bank account drained in the US since the introduction of FDIC in 1933. Plenty of people have had their bank accounts drained when they fell victim to "identification theft." That is quite a crafty euphemism -- banks fail to create secure systems, attackers steal funds from victims' bank accounts, and instead of owning up to their failure, banks blame the victims of the thefts by saying the victims' "identities" were "stolen." I'll give the banks some credit, however: they'll prop up a seemingly empathetic customer service representative who will repeatedly say how "sorry" they are on behalf of their employer. If the victim is persistent enough, the customer service rep will eventually promise to initiate a lengthy investigation, after which the bank will perhaps reinstate the funds that were stolen from their system. Do they fix their broken, insecure system? Of course not. But at least the victim isn't clogging the customer service lines any more.
  - hannasanarion 6y ago
    Identity theft is reversible. It has happened to me, somebody got a hold of my checking account details and drained the account of about $10,000. I called the bank, they reversed the transaction and gave me all my funds back right away, and it was over, just like that, no questions asked. What happens if your bitcoin details get stolen, hm? What happens when somebody drains your bitcoin wallet? Who can you complain to to get your cryptographically secure irrevocably transferred money back?
    - npongratz 6y ago
      That's simply the risk a person takes by having a bitcoin wallet. Seems (at least right now) there are plenty of people who want the benefit of a permissionless value transfer system and are willing to shoulder that risk. Hopefully they secure their magical numbers / private keys better than the banks do, because yes, obviously, there is no Central Bitcoin Governor acting as the Reinstater of Last Resort. Some people are fine with that risk. Others are not. It's totally cool. More than one value transfer system can coexist in the world.
      - hannasanarion 6y ago
        What do you mean "better than the banks do"? For one, banks don't have single-point-of-failure account access like blockchain does, and for another, the risks of banks are much lower because credit card and ACH transactions are easily reversible. These are all reasons that banks are more trustworthy and more secure than blockchain, which sees tens of millions of dollars of irreversible theft annually.
- jyrkesh 6y ago
  You're right in that the stock market and the banking system are not the same thing, but I'd argue that they're intrinsically linked. I move USD from my checking account into my investment accounts in order to buy equities, and I do that more when the Federal Reserve is pumping more liquidity into the market via low interest rates. There are many folks out there using e.g. TSLA as an inflation hedge (which is why it has a P/E > 1000) because they know that USDs will decline in value as liquidity keeps getting pumped. If we're all using a decentralized currency like Bitcoin with a fixed inflation rate, you're going to see a lot more sanity and price stability in the equities markets.
  - tonfa 6y ago
    Was the economy more stable with no monetary policies? Was the gold standard a failure but now we fixed the underlying issues?
notahacker 6y ago
> When you see the entire stock market move because the Fed chairperson makes an offhand comment about when they'll start or stop doing xyz policy, you realize having such a highly centralized system is dangerous. Then you see that Bitcoin moves more when Elon tweets...
- helloworld11 6y ago
  I support the idea of Bitcoin and blockchain despite flaws in both but you beat me to pointing this obviously bad argument against stock markets in defense of Bitcoin. BTC constantly has insane movements over absurd things like Musk tweets and etc.. It's much worse than the stock market at being volatile.

yurielt 6y ago

>Implying electronic banking can do anything about inflation Don’t be so dishonest

hannasanarion 6y ago
Want a deflationary monetary policy? Vote for it. Technology isn't going to solve the problem for you. Also, deflationary monetary policy is insane and nobody should want it. Economies grow from continuous re-investment and commerce, not from people stashing away their money and watching its value increase for no reason. edit: also, the fact that bitcoin is deflationary is entirely incidental, that was just Nakamoto's choice. It would have been just as easy to make bitcoin highly inflationary. The only thing that blockchain guarantees is that monetary policy can't ever change, which is also a thing that no sane person would ever want, there are lots of good reasons to modify the rate of inflation/deflation.
- yurielt 6y ago
  What mainstream candidate in the last two elections had a deflationary monetary policy? ROn Paul was the last candidate with something relatively close to that. That being said the idea that I want a deflationary policy on cash is ridiculous, but I want a deflationary policy on my semiliquid investments. BItcoin does that. >It would have been just as easy to make bitcoin highly inflationary. Yeah but then nobody would have liked it. There is definitively nothing wrong with two different kinds of cash existing in a system, one purely liquid one semiliquid. Again please do not be dishonest. There are very specific reasons that make bitcoing attractive. Acting as if electronic banking deals with what bitcoin is intended to solve, is an extremely dishonest way of framing things.
arcticbull 6y ago
Inflation is not a problem so long as you invest your money as soon as you receive it and your wages keep pace with inflation (and they do). In that case the 2% per annum inflation rate only hurts you from the day you get your pay check to the day you invest it productively or spend it on necessities. In fact if you purchase your necessities on a credit card the 0% APR until your bill comes due makes inflation work for you.

Noos 6y ago

...try bringing your cat to the vet on a bicycle in a thunderstorm, or walking fifteen minutes with him in a moderate rain to your bus stop. Try going on a date with someone with no car, or working second or third shift and have to go home in the midnight hours on a train with sketchy as hell people. Try bicycling to work with a decent cold, or having to work a 12 hour shift doing manual labor and then need to bicycle back 30 minutes. Really, there are plenty of use cases for cars. Right now where I live its incredibly cold with biting winds, and bicycling or even walking 20 minutes to a stop and waiting in the cold would be murder.